[HN Gopher] California to begin selling affordable state-branded...
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California to begin selling affordable state-branded insulin
beginning next year
Author : toomuchtodo
Score : 13 points
Date : 2025-10-16 21:15 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related:
|
| _California governor vetoes bill that would have set a $35 cap
| for insulin_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37815862 -
| October 2023 (139 comments)
|
| _California's Plan for Cheaper Insulin Collides with Big
| Pharma's Price Cuts_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35325942 - March 2023 (2
| comments)
|
| _California 's Own Brand of Insulin_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35220390 - March 2023 (0
| comments)
|
| _Insulin is way too expensive. California has a solution: Make
| its own_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34726726 -
| February 2023 (258 comments)
|
| _California aims to make its own insulin brand to lower price_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32311465 - August 2022 (29
| comments)
|
| _Governor Newsom announces California will make its own insulin_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32021868 - July 2022 (216
| comments)
|
| _California aims to slash insulin prices_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31649237 - June 2022 (208
| comments)
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _bill that would have set a $35 cap for insulin_
|
| Because this worked so well for home insurance.
|
| $35 in 2025 dollars buys as much as $32.92 in 2023 dollars [1].
| At what point does it become unprofitable for anyone to
| manufacture and deliver? (Not the out-of-patent stuff nobody
| wants to take that can be made for $3/vial. The long-acting and
| ultra-fast formulations people actually use when given a
| choice.)
|
| And unlike with home insurance, in an insulin shortage, people
| die. You _need_ a CalFIRE mechanism, a seller of last resort,
| who will purchase the insulin at any price on the market and
| sell it at $35 for such a scheme to work.
|
| State-controlled production removes that surprise factor. It's
| a much better system than price regulation.
|
| [1] https://www.usinflationcalculator.com
| hodgehog11 wrote:
| The difference is that the proposed caps for home insurance
| would have made the product unprofitable, no question.
|
| My understanding is that there is no way any vial of insulin
| anywhere, at this point in time, should cost enough to
| produce for US$35 asking price to be unprofitable. See [1]
| and [2] for example. This would need to increase with
| inflation, of course.
|
| Regardless, the bill didn't pass. Arguments like this were
| probably the reason why.
|
| [1] https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(
| 21)... [2]
| https://www.medcentral.com/endocrinology/diabetes/the-
| high-c...
| jrflowers wrote:
| > The long-acting and ultra-fast formulations people actually
| use when given a choice.
|
| The patent for insulin glargine (Lantus) and insulin aspart
| (NovoLog) expired over a decade ago, though kind of amusingly
| Sanofi holds an active patent on "putting more Lantus in a
| vial than you usually would"
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US9345750B2/en
|
| I could be wrong but off the top of my head the only insulin
| I can think of that's probably under patent is Afrezza, which
| is cool as hell because it's inhalable and ultra-quick
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