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MethBearBestBear t1_iredyb5 wrote

Reply to comment by vexingsilence in Biden Pardons Thousands of People Convicted of Marijuana Possession Under Federal Law by Azr431

The inflation reduction act caps insulin at $35 a month for Medicare. You can't do a lot to reign in private business in America all at once and tell private companies they have to sell for only X dollars so Medicare and Medicaid is the first step toward progress. States are pushing for cost caps and as for the FDA while they move slow it is because these are medical products and getting something wrong is many lives. As someone who is regulated by the FDA they can be a pain in the ass but they are needed

More needs to be done but if you are calling someone out at least call them out on it correctly

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vexingsilence t1_irf297b wrote

Cost caps aren't a fix. How about we legalize things like albuterol? Asthmatics know what works for them. You can use the same thing for decades but still have to juggle prescriptions and insurance, versus just being able to buy it over the counter.

They shouldn't be able to make a trivial alteration to a medication to extend its patent protection. I've read of cases where they combine two drugs and patent it. How is that useful? If you could take them separately, that's not a new invention or an enhancement to an existing one. That's something that patients would have already been doing on their own, if anything, the patent should be theirs.

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ZacPetkanas t1_irff6xp wrote

> How about we legalize things like albuterol?

I'd even be OK with the idea that a prescription requirement has a sunset per patient (OK, maybe too much overhead to work). If I've been taking a medication for a decade, I think it's pretty clear that my body tolerates it and that it's having the desired effect. Why do I have to keep getting a prescription for it? Especially those drugs that have no recreational use. Huff all the Albuterol you want, you're not going to get high.

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