Thread by @DrEricDing

ATROCIOUS big pharma price gouging of insulin:

This crying mother can’t afford the $1000 for her son’s insulin.

📌yet, it only costs pharma $5 to produce.

📌Insulin was invented 100 years ago by Fred Banting—who donated patent for $1 to make it free for all.

Let that sink in.

2) Insulin is one of the most disgusting cases of price gouging ever.

America has long taken a free market approach to pharmaceuticals.
Drug companies haggle separately over drug prices with a variety of private insurers across the country...

google.com/amp/s/www.vox.…

3) “Meanwhile, Medicare, the government health program for those over age 65 — it’s also the nation’s largest buyer of drugs—is barred from negotiating drug prices. That gives pharma more leverage, and it leads to the kind of price surges of EpiPens, opioid antidotes, & insulin.”

4) In 2018:
Johnson & Johnson CEO made $30M
Pfizer CEO made $28M
Merck CEO made $18M
Eli Lilly CEO made $16M
Gilead CEO made $16M

Meanwhile:

📌Americans spent $535B on Rx drugs

📌1/4 of diabetics rationed insulin to survive

📌500K Americans went bankrupt from medical bills.

5) What’s the right price patients should pay for medications? ZERO dollars, because no copay ==> more patients get their medicine ==> saves lives and saves money. Copays decrease adherence, and copays hurt patients who actually need them.

6) Yet, America has the highest rate of skipping drugs -- 1 in 6 patients!!! It’s shameful how much Americans have to skip their prescription medicine compared to other countries that pay much less and have zero copays.
nytimes.com/2019/11/11/ups…

7) Not just insulin, parents of kids with allergies are forced to shell out $600 for EpiPen because it is a matter of life and death. Here is a dark story about Mylan, the EpiPen maker who pharma jacked up the price from a few $ to $600.

8) First, Mylan didn’t even invent epinephrine, which is simply our human hormone, better known as *adrenaline*, packaged into an 💉 injector (not some wild invention), invented by scientists paid by taxpayers. But big pharma gets to hold parents of kids with allergies hostage.

9) Even worse, Mylan was also recently ***criminally charged*** by Department of Justice for outright fraudulent EpiPen billing, and fined $465 million for its corruption.

justice.gov/opa/pr/mylan-a…

10) What we need most of all is #MedicareForAll.

My wife @andreafeigl1 & I used to study universal health care. Key factors of success:

📌Not dictatorship—10x
📌Proportional rep elections—2.8x
📌Less ethnic fractionalization—2x
📌Less wealth inequality
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

11) if you cannot afford your hospital bills... here is something important to know...