President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

You are muddling disparate things.

Our country has a regulatory framework that has prevented biosimilars from coming to market -- which other companies could produce relatively easily and cheaply, and which would bring the cost down here. We created a government-enforced oligopoly, with three companies that in turn charged high prices.

I don't know the regulatory hoops in those other countries. ... but what they do have are price controls that we don't have.

Their price controls aren't that big a deal when it comes to something like insulin, because it was long ago commoditized, and it is relatively easy and cheap to produce.

If we got out of the way and let the forces of supply and demand work here, the cost of insulin here would be comparable to what it costs in those other places, without any price controls. The price controls in those other countries are unnecessary -- it's just that their governments have subject all drugs and medical services to a system of price controls. With insulin? There is enough demand, and supplying it is cheap and easy enough, that the prices probably aren't much different in those countries than they would be without the price controls.

Their systems of price controls are a non-factor for something like insulin. It's a host of other things that the price controls screw up, by creating an imbalance between supply and demand that creates shortages. Things like shortages of doctors, long wait times for procedures, and unavailability of newer drugs that are not commoditized the way insulin has been over the last 90 years.