• @xantoxis@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I suspect the correct market price, if it is sold on a market basis at all, should be somewhere between $12 and $32. “Manufacturing cost” is usually the cost to produce a packaged dose in the machine. It includes raw materials, power, labor involved. It doesn’t include QA, shipping, standards compliance, accounting, and so on. These things are necessary no matter how the drug is produced, and no matter by whom it is produced; but they aren’t “manufacturing cost” in the strictest sense. They would factor into market price.

      But here are some other things “manufacturing cost” doesn’t include: marketing, sales, profit margin, and the cost of price collusion. These things are the reasons insulin shouldn’t be sold on a market basis at all, and as such, should be free (as in price). Healthcare as a whole suffers from these problems. Insulin is just a particularly-obvious indicator of the whole con.