Nothing illustrates this better than the skyrocketing price of insulin in the last few years. My late partner was diabetic, and back in the day his insulin was so inexpensive, it barely made a dent in our household budget.

And why shouldn’t it have been inexpensive? It’s a basic life-saving medication that’s very cheap to produce. Pharmaceutical companies can make ordinary profits by selling it a little bit above cost.

But that’s not what happens anymore. Nowadays, and just because they can, pharmaceutical companies charge orders of magnitude more in in inflation-adjusted dollars than they used to.

The real conspiracy here is price gouging and monopolistic price fixing. (The price fixing is legally hard to prove, but it’s not a coincidence that no pharmaceutical offers inexpensive insulin anymore.)

Some people with diabetes are literally going bankrupt or going without necessities in life. Because if you can’t afford your insulin, you die.

The billionaires who run the pharmaceuticals don’t care, and that’s a conspiracy I wish people would focus on.