i disagree with a few of the suppositions and conclusions but this is entirely accurate, the root cause of this problem is ability to gain pull through regulatory and and legal measures.
This is cronyism and in no way is it any form of Capitalism.
"Amid this cesspool of indignant commentary, you’re likely to hear one of the biggest misconceptions around: that markets, competition, or capitalism have failed to respond to the patient’s need in creating more affordable insulin. What you won’t hear is how pharma giants have enlisted the FDA, the DEA, the FBI, customs and border security, and a dozen other taxpayer-funded regulatory and enforcement agencies to protect their profit margins.
If anything, the draconian constraints demonstrate just how diligently market competition brings down prices and how hamstrung and hogtied competition must be before it stops performing its essential functions.
When studying markets, economists like to imagine hypothetical “perfect competition,” the economic equivalent of physics’ frictionless plane. In perfect competition, many suppliers and demanders exchange the same product, buyers and sellers can find each other and switch products without added cost, and no barriers prevent new suppliers from entering the market to offer equivalent goods. If a perfect competition market is the hypothetical free-market heaven, the American insulin market is literal hell."