Interpret improvements as you like. For me it’s any large scale reforms or legislative packages designed to improve the country for all or see to the material interests of the majority without overly benefiting the elite.
Any big consumer protection, environmental, infrastructure, or other legislation from Clinton onwards that materially improved the lives of all?
Obamacare and the medicaid expansion comes to my mind. It has obviously improved people’s lives but considering how broken the healthcare system remains, and that it was written by the insurance industry to undermine single-payer, it seems to me a mitigated win at best.
Gay marriage and marijuana legalisation but that was the courts and the states although i’m sure the federal government could’ve stood in the way had they chosen to.
I’ve only live here since the 2010s so that’s all I can think of.
Someone tried to explain this to me once. They said that the original formulas for insulin are really cheap, it’s just the manufacturers have all agreed to only make the expensive formulas to maximize profits since it’s not in their best interest otherwise.
Collusion between a small number of players to control prices in a market is called a “cartel” and it’s a significant departure from the concept of a “free market”.
Cartels happen in markets that are not free, because in a free market that price fixing would lead to insulin sales being so profitable that new manufacturers would get into the game and the competition would bring prices back down to their normal levels.
One can argue whichever way they like for the overall benefit of the tight regulations we have on things like insulin production and distribution, but it is a fact that one effect of that tight regulation is extremely high barriers to entry, and hence the formation of price cartels such as we see now.