THIS is a photo of $300 worth of insulin, the type i use. this is 10mL of insulin, which lasts me about ~10ish days

THIS is (still) a photo of 3 1,000 gallon tanks of insulin. doing some simple math here, if you count it at $30/ml, you're looking at, in this photo, $340,650,000 worth of insulin

i didn't spot those two tanks in the back. so i'd guess there's about a little over half a billion dollars worth of insulin in this photo, using this pricing metric. right?

do you /really/ think it costs lilly that much to make insulin at scale, lmao

and i missed another couple of tanks in the back there, too

the price of this photograph just keeps going up!

anyway the point i'm trying to make is that the patent for making insulin analog was sold for a dollar.

one dollar

there's no reason for this to cost that much

insulin is not a /drug/ it is a /hormone/. people are born without thyroids and can't make their own thyroid hormones to regulate their bodies. we don't call them "thyroid drugs"

i will keep yelling it from the rafters:
a medication is used to correct a condition
a hormone is used to maintain a life

i think a lot about how the street price of the amount of insulin in a tank farm can be used to fund like ten years of college scholarships or house the homeless for 3 years or whatever because it's just so absurd

and the united states is /the only/ country where it's like this for fuck's sakes