The drug companies and insurance companies have made insulin out of the price range of many Americans. California is trying to solve that problem by manufacturing its own insulin. If this works, states could manufacture their own generic drugs, bringing down the cost of medications for more people.
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I think that is fantastic news! I’m glad California are trying to help! Diabetes is a horrible illness, and it needs to be managed properly so people can have a good quality of life. Good for him 
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Recently, there have been a number of news stories of people who died because they were rationing their insulin. Stories like those help fuel this action and show the need for something like this.
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I have read those stories too (about all sorts of meds being rationed) and its harrowing to think that people are risking their health purely because they can’t afford to stay alive!
I have been trying to find an older story from a couple of years ago regarding a medication that was on sale for xxx hundreds of dollars, and someone made it for just a couple of dollars, thereby proving it was uneccessary to charge such ridiculous sums of money for vital stuff like this. I really hope that companies sit up and take notice…there are some very clever people out there who actually care about health rather than wealth!
This is true of mental health medications as well and is likely the cause of many suicides and some mass shootings, they say.
I remember that story. I don’t remember the drug off the top of my head either, but there are probably a bunch of them.
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This is interesting as I am a type 1 diabetic and I am aware that the UK is trying to get patients to use the Novo Nordisk range.
The 3 main producers of insulin are…Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi Aventis. I used to have one made by Eli Lilly, called Humalog, but the NHS changed me to Fiasp, made by Novo Nordisk , so maybe they are hoping to get cheaper insulin if California are able to achieve this & their Novo competitors are forced to reduce the price!
The new insulin does the job , but the pens we inject it with are not as good as the Eli Lilly ones I used to use… so much so that I have insisted on having 2 spare pens from Novo Nordisk, as one broke & left me with no means of getting another when the doctors were closed…so couldn’t inject my insulin!
Making cheaper insulin is a great idea, but I hope they will seek advice from knowledgeable patients in the process. My diabetic nurses agree with me that the current Novo Nordisk pens are rubbish
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I really hope USA does get to grips with this issue.
When you compare the average cost of insulin in different countries, USA prices are about 10 times higher than nearly every other country.
The table in this article shows average price in each country -
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cost-of-insulin-by-country
It seems crazy that the comparative average prices are
$98.70 in USA, whilst over the border in Canada it is $12,
in UK it is $7.52, Australia $6.92
I know that making a generic version of an insulin is not as simple as making a generic copy of aspirin or paracetamol but there must be ways the cost can be reduced in USA, if other countries can do it.
Where there’s a will there’s a way.
This article is from September 2021 - I found it explained things well.
It also mentions the San Francisco “Open Insulin” Project - it sounds as though they have generated some good support since this article was written if the State Authorities have taken up the cause too.
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@butterscotch lts long been known in the third world that american
pharma companies are the biggest rip off merchants on this planet !!
( apart from the energy companies of course)!!
When aids was rife India and South Africa formed an alliance to produce
their own anti aids drugs because american pharma refused to lower
their prices to allow their citizens to access these ready made
american drugs with result that thousands of poor aids victims died !!
The americans even resorted to legal action to prevent SA snd lndia from
producing their own vaccines, lndia/ SA ignored this and succeeded in
developing a vaccine which was able to cut the tremendous death
toll that was taking place( people were burying their relatives alongside
the main roads at one time!!) as makeshift graveyards sprang up all over the
country !!
All in the name of profit !!
This is not an anti- american post BTW, but more an anti- capitalist
pharma post!!!
The healthcare system is the US is not a capitalist system. In a true capitalist system, there has to be choice. If someone is dying, they don’t have a choice about whether they take lifesaving drugs. Because of the laws, cheaper drugs can’t be imported. That doesn’t leave any choice.
I can only speak from my own experience, but after using insulin for almost 35 years your blood sugars were always better controlled when using pig insulin. As numbers increased I assume they needed to increase production & the new type of insulin was created.
The new insulin was fine, but everybody eats varied amounts of carbohydrates . The method of balance is to measure the amount of carbohydrates & should be balanced with the insulin units you use and that works well, but it seems that if you have an extra 10% of carbs & an extra 10% of insulin the results are not as good.
It seems that white bread has more carbs than wholemeal bread & many bread producers now give the values on the packs, but nice freshlly baked breads rarely do.
The timing of when the insulin works is very different on many people& temperature can make a difference to the amount of carbs you need to eat and your activity levels do the same.
I hope these new Blood sugar reading machines will help, but I wont get mine for a few weeks so I won’t know.till I do.
My day time blood sugars are good but having been rushed into hospital in a coma at least 10 times, when I am sleeping, makes me worry about my night time insulin so keep it slightly less than a perfect dose. My nurse tells me that the alarm on my potential new machine will wake me, but I am not yet convinced that I can wake from a coma to open and drink a small can of full sugar Coke to bring me round. Fizzy Coke works much faster than glucose & I will be out of my hypo in 10-15 mins ,to eat the biscuit by the side of my bed! Just keep your fingers crossed that the alarm wakes me! 
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I was discussing this sort of thing with an American friend a few years ago; although he doesn’t have diabetes, he knows about it and takes an interest
He said that diabetics in the USA have a double whammy as not only is their medication & insulin expensive, but most American food is processed & junk food; full of sugar, especially High Fructose Corn Syrup - HFCS -; not so easy to find wholemeal/wholegrain bread, fresh fruit & veg, and all the rest of it.
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I suspect that is very true, that is why I prefer to cook my own food!
This intrigues me…for the size of America, you would think this sort of produce would be falling from the skies!
I hope you get on well with your new machine @Twink55 - it sounds like you will have a continuous glucose monitor fitted?
My partner is Type 1 insulin user too - he is fortunate in that he has always had prior notice of his hypos - if his blood sugar drops below 4 mmol/l, even if he is asleep, he wakes and instantly knows from the way he feels that he needs glucose.
It is difficult to gauge exactly how much insulin you need - we’ve found it depends on so many factors - and sometimes he can have weeks of perfect readings, then it starts fluctuating for no obvious reason.
He has never fancied having a continuous blood glucose monitor fitted but I think he would if he stopped receiving inbuilt warning signals when his blood glucose was dropping too low. He lives on his own so it would be a worry if he didn’t feel his hypos coming on in time to take action.
I’m guessing they (the American friend) meant that it’s not as cheap as processed food. It also depends where you live. In some places, transportation costs add to the higher cost of fresh fruits and vegetables. Whole grain bread can be more expensive than white bread.
HFCS was a big deal a couple decades ago. There’s still a lot of sugar in stuff but there’s some awareness of HFCS so that companies advertise they don’t have any in their food, although some still do.
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@butterscotch , Imo the freedom of choice argument is just a means
of promoting capitalism, in practice it leads monopolies which also stifle
competition and leads to higher prices too !
They may not call them monopolies but groups of companies become
associated and co- operate to such a degree that they are in fact monopolies !
Hence an aspirin that actually costs •5 cents to make will cost ten times
that amount ??
When it comes to health the free market cannot be trusted as can be seen
by your own experience in america, hence this thread ??
Yes, that was the gist of my post. Healthcare can’t be used as a model for captialism in this case because there isn’t free choice.
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The NHS are supplying my blood glucose monitor because being type 1 and living alone is risky.
They are a bit strange as they only last a fortnight & then you get another one that you just fit yourself… so it can’t be difficult. Apparently it is a tiny needle and they are self adhesive, so I will try to let you know how I cope with it.
They also say you don’t need to rely on your mobile as they can provide a similar gadget which has the app built into it.
Thanks @Twink55 - I would be interested to hear how you get on with it.
When I first heard about them, I thought they sounded like a great idea - but Himself wasn’t too keen on the thought of it, so if your experience of using it is positive, I’ll let him know.
Good Luck 
Thank you & I hope I can offer some words to persuade your partner, if I get on well with it.
I had lots of questions when my consultant offered it, but he said " try it and see, if you don’t like it we will just have to go back to finger pricking".
I told him I would do that anyway, just to make sure his machine didn’t make any mistakes! 
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