Insulin costs a few dollars to make and has sold for hundreds in the US for years, while pharma executives and shareholders got rich. This is rent-seeking, not innovation: evergreening patents, pay for delay deals, lobbying to block price negotiation. Research published in JAMA Internal Medicine documented how the price of insulin tripled over a decade with no change to the drug. People rationed it and died. Every one of those deaths padded a margin that became someone's fortune. When a billion dollars is built on a drug people need to live, 'earned' is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
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