Why is the price of insulin so high?
There have been several news articles on price increases for Insulin? Here are two.
https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20180725/spiking-insulin-costs-put-patients-in-brutal-bind
These articles raise more questions than they answer.
Insulin is a very old drug, first used in 1922. There are several different types of insulin but most modifications or tweaks appear to be minor compared to ground breaking discoveries of brand new drugs.
Why has our government granted new patents for relatively minor modifications to this drug?
Why have foreign governments been less receptive to new patents for revisions to insulin?
Pharmaceutical firms have in the past decade created several new drugs other than insulin to treat diabetes. Since insulin is a substitute for non-insulin diabetes drugs, the higher price of insulin allows pharmaceutical firms to charge higher price for non-insulin drugs.
Would a lower price of insulin lead to price decreases for other types of diabetes medicines?
How effective are the new diabetes drugs compared to insulin?
Are there instances where pharmaceutical firms are persuading doctors to prescribe new medicines when insulin would have the same or better outcome?
Is there a relationship between patent policy on insulin modifications and the price of and utilization of new diabetes drugs?
Do patients on new non-diabetes drugs get better health outcomes than patients on insulin?
Review Question: Is it possible that control of insulin prices brought about by more stringent review of new patents or greater competition from generic forms of insulin would decrease utilization of new diabetic medicines or decrease the price of new diabetic medicines?
I would like to learn more about the economics of insulin and new diabetes drugs. Please contact me at Bernstein.book1958@gmail.com with some citations of literature that I should read on this topic.