gotta love how people apparently don't like facts so much this comment now has zero points. Insuline is cheap, it's cheap to make, and cheap to distribute, and the US doesn't like cheap when it comes to having a steady supply of "you will buy our drugs, or you will literally die".

Legal hostage taking in this way is uniquely US.

Yep. And if some insulin gets too expensive, at least in Germany they kick it out from the system completely. It's either you can sell your product in the country with a price we think is reasonable, or we will not let you to be in the market.

20 euros per 10ml (about 2 weeks of use for me) is still kind of a good money for a product I cannot stop using...

Sure, there's a price difference across regions. That's nothing new.

The important thing is that insulin prices haven't been going up. You can continue to get the same insulin as 50 years ago for pretty much the same price modulo inflation.

And anyway, the Netherlands getting cheap stuff is a side-effect of innovation here. America builds for America, driven by American needs, and you guys benefit as a result. There's a reason recombinant DNA tech (which backs modern insulin) came from the Bay Area and not the Netherlands. NL has twice the pop of the Bay and a fraction of the inventions. A single university here has like 5x as many Nobel Prize winners as that entire country.

I mean, I'm glad you're able to buy insulin cheap but we're richer and we're the ones driving progress, so we'll keep at it because we want a better life for ourselves (and if you benefit, it's fine). You're not capable of making that for us, yourselves, or anyone really.

Europe is free riding on the US.