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| President Trump issued an Executive order forcing Big Pharma to match European prices. On Mr Biden's first day in the White House, he issued an executive order cancelling President Trump's Executive Order. |
The United States has, by far, the highest prices for insulin in the world. Ironically, the Eli Lilly facility in Indianapolis, Indiana is the single largest producer of insulin in the world.
Insulin is the chemical regulator produced by the pancreas that meters glucose (sugar in the blood) through cell walls into muscles, the brain cells and into the cells lining blood vessels. A lack of insulin (Type I diabetes) results in a very high blood sugar level as the liver keeps pumping it into the blood-stream but the cells that need it are not able to absorb it.
Recently, users of certain brands of insulin were sent notice that there may be a 30-to-60 day lag-time in the delivery of their prescriptions. That is a very big deal for the 2 million people in the US who have Type I diabetes and availability and quality of insulin is a life-or-death issue.
According to Al Jazeera News, equipment that had been used for insulin production has been rescheduled to produce the latest (and much more profitable) weight-loss drugs.
All that on top of (maybe) World War III going hot and cutting off supplies of, or disrupting the production of insulin from other countries.
God must have a mighty high opinion of us because He never gives us more than we can handle and things are getting mighty interesting, in the Chinese curse sort of way.
Word search "pharmacopaiea" in the Received Text. Scrivener's is a good one, or Beza.
ReplyDeleteLooked it up including Al Jazeera News.
ReplyDeleteSeems that report was in March?
Was it resolved already given my hospital never had insulin issues?
Thanks for the boots-on-the-ground report.
DeleteIt is my impression after a quick look at the internet that there are many different "synthetic" insulin variants. The shortages would only impact those variants that were made in the same facilities as the Big O and Big W drugs.
Those hiccups might have been smoothed out at the distribution level via more frequent but smaller deliveries.
Or it might all be BS.
I feel for the Type 1 diabetics as there is little that they can do to change it.
ReplyDeleteType 2 on the other hand had better get busy and unfuck their diets and get off the insulin as fast as they can before a real shortage of insulin shows up.
Anon
Chemo-therapy drugs are highly fragmented because there are so many types of cancer.
ReplyDeleteThe bleeding-edge is to send bits of biopsy to a lab and have them culture the cells and then try a multitude of recipes and drugs with different technologies to see what that exact mutation is most vulnerable to. Then to whip-up the silver bullet.
Chemo drugs are so danged expensive because the market, in total, is huge but the market for even the most commonly used anti-cancer drug is a small percentage of that huge market.
The bill for end-of-life-care for a cardiac patient averages about $25k. It is about $100k for end-of-life-care is about the average for a cancer patient with $400k being the average for some forms of cancer.
America could cut the need for insulin by about 90% if we got rid of the processed crap that comprises the majority of what grocery stores sell these days.
ReplyDeleteWhen hubby was alive we ordered his insulin from Canada. It was 1/4 the cost of what we had been paying.
ReplyDeleteDogs and cats get diabetes too. Big surprise for me, when our cat was diagnosed. Insulin was fairly cheap, but still needed to fill a scrip and obtain syringes.
ReplyDeleteI’m sorry for people who have to deal with this. Shortages and high cost must be a nightmare. Insulin also has a limited shelf life, to add to the problem.
Luckily, the cat went into remission. Diet change helped - cut out the dry food, it’s loaded with carbs and filler.
Southern NH