Capitalism is economic terrorism.
It’s almost like someone should go and shoot the CEO dead in the street
ceos are like head slaves on plantation. While they are pieces of collaborating shits, they are not the root of this rot. And even those that are, are so intertwined with everything that you cant fix this just by getting rid of them. All this shit is so annoying, since its so tangled up there is no clean way to deal with it and if you do it wrong, it just leads to something even worse.
Yeah, thanks armchair historian.
oh what am i saying, REVOLUTION NOW!
One could argue that patents and copyright are anti-capitalist
They are literally monopolies on whatever they concern.
Correct. Patents and copyrights are state granted monopolies that are in direct opposition to free market forces that capitalism thrives on.
Copyrights and patents generate enormous amounts of wealth from rent seeking. This wealth has been used to continue to entrench these draconian concepts into our legal and governmental systems.
Even worse they have been used to stop the spread of information and monopolize development thus slowing down technological advancement. So many people have died so these clowns can make a buck.
One could argue that artificial scarcity is a farce, but unless you have more money than the people who benefit from IP, your voice will not be heard on a policy level.
So, you agree patents and copyrights are contrary to capitalism and free markets?
At least you can buy a human for only $85.21!
If he wanted it to be freely available, why did he even sell the patent ? Just disclaim at the patent office. Selling is just asking the new holder to start enforcing.
They sold the patent to the University of Toronto, so they didn’t exactly sell it to a for-profit patent troll.
But also, that was in 1923, so the patent has long since expired.
They also don’t make insulin the way that he did back then. Not justifying the price hike cause the way its made now is way cheaper that it was with the old method (which was basically grinding up animal parts to extract insulin). These fucks are just profiting off of the suffering of Americans who have literally no choice but to use their drug.
I mean, that’s better than selling to a private person, still feels weird, since disclaiming a patent is absolutely possible, and has a 100% chance of leading to the desired outcome, vs whatever small chance there may be that the University starts taking profits on it. Or even just sees themselves forced to sell the patent, because of potential financial issues.
Yeah, the risk is small, but eliminating it in it’s entirety would’ve been easily possible, so it just feels a bit weird he didn’t do it.
The drug I have to take to live costs anywhere from $4,000-$5,500/month without insurance. This is actually cheaper than what I was on before—a cocktail of 4 drugs, some taken multiple times a day, that was almost $10,000/month. I’m lucky(?) that there are a ton of programs that together cover the cost for me. Unfortunately there are hoops I have to jump through every month to continue qualifying for the assistance and have to regularly take time off from work to make the appointments. I’ve lost jobs due to this, but am currently working a position where my manager is happy enough with my work to fudge time cards to help me out.
I hate this country.
Welcome to USA, I guess.
In other countries, you could probably completely fill a fridge with insulin for $800.
If you need a lot of different prescribed drugs then £114.50/year to cover every prescription you have is an option here. Otherwise £9.90 each.
Is there any reason a diabetic has to get the newer patented formulas instead of the old one that the pic talks about which is regularly sold for around $25 a vial in the US without insurance?
I know the new stuff works faster and you don’t have to worry about your diet as much so I’m sure it’s much easier, but why would you have to die instead of just managing your diet and using the $25 stuff for a month in this emergency situation?
Don’t get me wrong all medicine should be free and stuff but like, why die instead of switching to the cheap stuff and dietary management for a month?
The old formulas you can buy OTC for $25 are more inconvenient to use, but will indeed keep you from dying. The main difference between the R insulin and Novolog/Humalog are how quickly they act. Novolog starts lowering your glucose in about 60 minutes while the R takes 2 hours. Dietary management is not related to which insulin you’re using, at least for type 1. The long acting substitute, NPH, is a lot more difficult to use than Lantus though. It still works. I ran out of good insulin on a trip last year and had to sub the R and NPH and did have some issues with hypoglycemia. I’m more qualified to swap them on my own than many people though (lots of people are not informed enough to change their dosage without professional medical advice).
So yes, the claim that OOP’s only alternative to paying $800 was to die is not true.
Insulin is not permanently shelf stable, and will still expire in the fridge.
Diabetics usually start with a long-acting insulin to keep blood sugar from naturally rising plus a fast-acting insulin for corrections and to compensate for food.
The old style of just giving 2 long-acting shots of mixed insulin is mostly obsolete, except for legacy patients, some pregnant patients, and other special cases I can only theorize.
A good number of diabetics only use fast acting insulin in a pump, receiving microdoses every minute.
To switch brands of insulin, much less therapies in any circumstance requires a doctor’s visit.
With all that said, the insurance company will often replace a medication in the event of an accident, typically only once a year.
Without that, a patient might be able to find a charity they will assist them.
You also may be able to travel to the next state over where the cost of insulin is regulated.
Failing all other options, it is better to check yourself in to the hospital as your sugar begins to rise and tell them that you cannot control your blood sugar.
The subs would be R and NPH, not the old mixed formulas like 70/30.
I don’t think I ever had insurance in the US where checking into the hospital for any amount of time would cost less than $800 out of pocket.
Unless I had already reached my annual deductible, that is.
Unless I had already reached my annual deductible, that is.
“Hey good news! After about 35% of your annual income is spent on medical bills on top of your triple digit monthly premiums… That health insurance starts to kick in!”
(Until it resets at the end of the year. Teehee!)
The deductible system is ridiculous.
It’s no longer about saving money at that point.
Ah well that’s good, at least there appears to be some options.
I’ve heard of clandestine labs making patented insulin and selling it cheap too, and I’m all for a good grey market.
Not sure about that, and not sure if I could trust that.
Another option is to have the doctor prescribe insulin pens or another brand of the same kind of insulin. It’s technically a different prescription and the insurance company usually covers it.
People respond wildly differently to different types of insulin and it isn’t just a matter of switching and watching your diet. Too much and too little insulin can be deadly and it makes you feel like absolute shit.
Ah, so you’d need to know your dosage for that type beforehand, and if you didn’t know it you can’t just wing it. Still though, might be beneficial to know that for emergencies like this because it sounds preferable to certain death.
There should be a little chart your doc gives you at diagnosis (or something, spitballing here) that lays out the dosages you’d need for X, Y, and Z brands so that if say you use X and they’re out (or your kid freezes it or something) you can just consult the dosage chart and get Y for now.
A unit is a unit, so the dosages are the same. What varies is onset curve and length of action, so timing.
I don’t think it’s a thing because even the same insulin analogue from different manufacturer can have different dosing
Is it free in grey countries?
Either that, or maybe they don’t have diabetes there. (Lol joking)
I can confirm, as a insured I am paying $0.00 for Insulin in Macedonia. Now I am receiving 6 Novo Nordisk Tresiba pens per month. How much is that in US?
I couldn’t find the answer easily myself and ended up asking AI, so take this with a significant grain of salt, but supposedly a 3mL pen would be around $145 without insurance.
I genuinely think that in some third world countries, as part of the middle class, you can have a better life than in the USA.
It’s also much harder to become a middle class in those countries.
Something I’ve noticed is when untraveled people in the USA try to contextualize themselves with other countries they pick the worst examples they can think of. Favelas in Brazil or slums in South Africa for example. We do this to the point where our entire conception of countries (or in the case of Africa, continents) is the worst imagery we can think of. I think they genuinely don’t believe that, for all their troubles India, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, etc also have smartphones and big buildings and libraries and universities and laboratories, and educated people living decent lives.
They also can’t see how the overcrowded jails full of pretrial prisoners, the barefoot children carrying buckets for water in Appalachia, the rundown schools full of illiterate kids, the impunity of rich private interests, the corrupt sheriffs and judges, and on and on, puts us in the company of the “third world countries”. Yes we have nice places too, but SO DO THEY. A broken society in the 21st century isn’t people living in mud huts, it’s children shitting in the street next to a glass skyscraper with LEED Platinum certification.
Logically, it’s not about how much money you make, it’s about purchasing power. It is irrelevant if you earn only $400 a month when you can eat well for $1 and pay $100 for your housing, you have free health care and education. That is the reality in some third world countries.
Third world doesn’t mean poor, it just means not aligned with US or Russia
No one really uses that word in its Cold War context anymore. It’s the common term for “developing countries” and the like.
Espousing an old no longer relevant definition to sound smarter and be “right” is peak lemmy/reddit behavior. Third world does mean poor now.
Spain isn’t third world, it already had shown the middle finger to Trump and also has few to do with Rusia. Third world countries don’t certainly mean people starving, the people there often have all what they need, but this, you’ll see few Ferraries there and chalets with swimming pool. Someone is rich, not necesarly because a lot of money, but because he need only few. We often enter in a rabbit hole of the consumism, spending a lot of money in things we really don’t need, we work like a dog to have enough money to pay a journey to Hawaii to recover us from the burnout, which we wouldn’t have working less, no needing this journey.
If you can eat well for $1 then it is definitely a poor country relative to the US. Differences in purchasing power are a direct result of differences in wealth.
I think that the US is a third world country, it’s rich but most money is used for weapons and to make richer the billonairs and big corporations, in the social and cultural sphere, it is one of the most backward in the world. Now with Trump the US is turning in a running gag for the most countries. A country where 40 milloncof citizen don’t have enough to eat at least 2 times a day, isn’t a rich country.
I really should just put a full block on lemmy.ml. Thanks for the reminder!
There’s a reason countries like Vietnam are so popular with digital nomads.
My dream would be to get a remote nightshift job and live in a house by the beaches of south Thailand
Invented by a Canadian, exploited by an American.
Were I am, you just get Insulin for free with a prescription from you Family Doctor, because we have a National Health Service.
Even without said prescription, it’s only €70.
Americans are being thoroughly screwed, and it’s very much on purpose thanks to the way laws and regulations around Healthcare were designed in the US (and, at the risk attractint the crowd throwing “bothsideism” slogans around to defend “their” “tribe”, this is due to the actions of both US major parties) since in a real Free Market, Insuline over there should cost around the same as it costs over here without a prescription, not 10x more - without artificial market barriers there would be investors literally flying planeloads of the thing from Europe to US to make a killing out of buying it cheaply over here and selling it for “merelly” twice as much over there.
Remember Remember the 4th of December
Making an AI meme of Luigi as a Saint is one thing.
Making a painting and having it casually displayed in your room is a whole other level.
Also, I can’t believe it’s already been a year.
Yea I guess but my mom was destroyed by our cruel and heartless system. She’s gone now but painting this helped me reconnect with the glimmer of hope we all felt for a moment after this happened. It also helped process the trauma I myself went through as her caregiver not being able to access what she needed
Symbols are powerful things. I’m not an American, but something that surprised me with Mangione was how people on the left and the right seemed to support him. It was a rare case of example of political unity amongst regular people.
Yeah I noticed this too
I am so, so sorry about your loss. I’m glad to hear that you were able to feel a beacon of hope last year, and that this painting was a way for you to cling on to it and feel it a little longer. I hope you find a way to keep holding on to it, and through that hope find the courage to not give up and try to support change instead whenever you can and have the strength and energy to do so. But I can’t even imagine how hard that must be. And most of all, carry the love you had for your mom in your heart despite the grief, and the disgust and hate for the system that led to her demise quicker than it had to be.
I hope you don’t mind if I save that picture of yours.
Thank you for the kind words yes no problem
✊
Yeah, just dismantle the state and give it to private companies… What could go wrong?
Something in american.
It’s 10¢ in developed countries like Georgia
And let’s be clear, we’re talking about the European OG Georgia, not the US state.
Isn’t that where Palin saw the Russians?
Russians with almost free insulin, friend
If you talk about killing the few people like these that are the root cause of all these problems, you’re a terrorist. You go to jail
These people actually kill people by the thousands, millions, and we call them smart CEO’s and celebrate them 🥂
Free Luigi.
There is plenty of propaganda on social media to exalt the billionaires and CEOs. Instagram is especially really bad at it. I don’t know why the algorithm suggest heavily to me about “entrepreneur” pages (maybe my investing platform sold my data), although some of these pages whitewash literal fraudulent and underhanded behaviours from celebrity CEOs and fraudsters, spinning their past behaviours as “another way to get rich”. I also think the posts and profiles were written by bots, because the language and syntax used sound almost identical from one another, in spite of these profiles supposedly being independent from one another.
Where’s all the promo for hard working Italian plumbers these days?
its in films, and shows especially sprinkled with copagandas, and military propaganda.
I’m not diabetic and the situation with insulin fills me with a white hot rage.
Same
the OOC might be TYPE 1 which is even more dependant on insulin than type 2, because you’re pancreas cant make any insulin at all. plus there also other expenses that comes with being type 1. CGM, INSULIN pumps(which are often regularly replaced because they wear out). you can sometimes tell when someones type 1, if they have a device attached to thier arm, its usually a circular button, thats the sensor(its another cost)
I’m sure they’re Type 1. At least with Type 2 you can kind of manage it a little without the meds. The insurance company should be firebombed for refusing to replace the damaged meds.
