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The Goodman Institute Health Blog

Free Market Competition Is the Way to Lower the Cost of Insulin and Other Drugs

Posted on March 2, 2023March 3, 2023 by John C. Goodman

In 1951, Congress stopped letting drug makers decide which drugs they would sell over the counter and which would require a prescription and turned that decision over to the FDA. Drugs already available without a prescription were “grandfathered.”

That is why, to this day, people can buy regular and NPH insulin without a prescription. Because those forms of insulin are off‐patent and because consumers comparison‐shop, they are relatively cheap: “ReliOn,” a brand available from Walmart, can cost as little as $25 a vial. Evidence suggests that prescription requirements correlate with higher drug prices and that removing them correlates with reductions in drug prices.

Jeffrey Singer in The Hill

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For many years, our health care blog was the only free enterprise health policy blog on the internet. Then, when the NCPA closed its doors, the health blog stopped as well.

During this five-year hiatus no one else has come forward to claim the space. So, my colleagues and I have decided to restart the blog in connection with the Goodman Institute. We invite you and others to use this forum to share your views.

John C. Goodman,

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