Insulin Costs KEEP RISING Due To Brazen Greed

Why is insulin so freaking expensive?

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So let's talk about insulin. Since I know we don't have a ton of time left. and this is a hot-button issue for many people. one because it's such a widely used drug in the United States. It was a part of these reconciliation negotiations. unfortunately didn't make it in. But also I think it's used as a campaign issue for some Democrats because as I mentioned it's so widely used. and two, it's so cheap to make. And is so heavily gouged by the pharmaceutical industry. Talk a bit about insulin's role in price gouging by for-profit Health Care in this country. And just the extent to which that is harming so many millions of people. Well, Emma's insulin is a perfect issue to talk about. because there are two aspects to it. One is that the insulin used to be animal insulin; it was patented in 1923 as an extract of the animal pancreas where the insulin was being made. And the animals and until 1982 all insulin came from animals. but in 1982 insulin became the first genetically engineered drug and they could splice the gene for human insulin into E Coli bacteria and have Vats of E Coli bacteria turn into insulin manufacturing plants. In 1982 the first genetically engineered insulin came out. and that was called recombinant human insulin. The molecular structure of that insulin was exactly the same as human insulin. though the folding of the protein was slightly different. and it didn't function exactly as human insulin does. and then in 1996, the drug companies started to come out with a new class of insulin called insulin analogs. which were different from recombinant human insulin by one or two amino acids. that purportedly got it to fold better and act more physiologically.