Who do we have to invade to drive down the price of insulin?

Scotland.

Obviously, that would be either Novo Nordisk or Eli Lilly. The big expense with insulin is that - whereas most drugs are "manufactured" (e.g. dump all the right chemicals into a vat and press them into tablets), insulin is "genetically engineered" (stick human DNA into an E. coli cell and let it grow). Genetically engineered = fancier = more expensive.

Um. I reject the concept that it has become significantly more expensive to produce insulin thru rDNA manipulation of e.coli in the past ten years. There is no reason for the process to have changed, except to perhaps make it CHEAPER and MORE efficient. The price has DOUBLED in less than ten years.

Apparently my sarcasm didn't come across clearly :)

I absolutely agree that it's ridiculous prices have gone up, not down. The price increase over the years was reportedly to price the insulins more comparably with the oral anti-hyperglycemics. Unfortunately, with only two major players in the synthetic insulin market (plus the relatively "new kids" with specialty products, like Lantus) and needing a special FDA dispensation to import beef or porcine insulin, these companies can pretty much charge what they want. And the relatively more complex process to produce and regulate insulin effectively prohibits new companies from coming into the market.

One of my medicines (ambien 10mg, 30/month) just went generic. It went from being 200+/month to 10-15.

I don't have prescrip insurance anymore. Luckily medicines in the USA are actually cheaper than all of central/south america.

Having seen it from the "other side of the counter," I am constantly amused and amazed to see how much the "total price" can vary. Most people don't realize that pharmacies don't have a lot of say in setting the price of prescription meds. The insurance company tells the pharmacy how much money they'll reimburse and how much the copay should be. Really the only thing the pharmacy has a say in is their "dispensing fee," usually about $5 a prescription, and even then the insurance company says if that's agreeable or not. Most pharmacies make little or no money off of prescriptions - it's all the over-the-counter and front end products that keep them afloat.

In that case I should probably give up on any further effort applying to your place of employment unless there's a Rx drug out of pocket max, yeah right.

(Think I have 15 prescription drugs, three of which together would cost over $2K/month to fill out of pocket. (Plus six OTC drugs that are necessary... actually private insurance probably won't cover at least three of those prescriptions since they exist OTC... no wait, I forgot two more... anyway, yeah.)

unless there's a Rx drug out of pocket max

I've never worked anywhere that had anything like that.

a parent of premies hit that maximum after about seven weeks of neonatal ICU.

Those sorts of "extremes" are why I carry Aflac.

I hit that max for everything but the med copays pretty much every single years I had private insurance, um yay for imposssible-to-control type 1 diabetes from age 4, a kidney and pancreas transplant, shitty luck, and so forth.

But as far as I remember, I still had copays for medication after reaching the max.

That was a semi-sarcastic comment on my part, I know of nothing like that, either.

Right now I take 120 Prilosec a month, which can be filled at the pharmacy (and are totally paid for right now) but most private insurannce companies would point to Prilosec OTC and say "too bad" too me, I'm pretty sure.

Ditto for some of the supplements and so forth, I suspect, and they're not really optional.

On the other hand there are lots of sources of income that I don't feel free to pursue right now due to the (potentially fatal) possibility of losing SSDI/state medical assistance, but with private insurance that would not be an issue.

Or, I could find some poor sucker who also has benefits to marry me so I have secondary insurance as well, hahaha.

Or, could even go and buy a secondary individual plan hahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA *wipes tears from eyes and picks self up off floor*

(to anyone reading this who doesn't know me, my medical history is... interesting)

Depending on plans and different situations, the prices of the drugs can vary.

For example, Medicare contract prices are different than Premera or public assistance, even if a drug is not "covered" by the plan. Over-the-counter stuff too: I pay a different price for Claritin because it was prescribed, even though it is OTC and not covered.

Those "savings" prices are full retail, which almost noone pays unless they have absolutely no insurance--and actually don't pay. They're pretty much "claim prices" for when the business submits a bill to collections.