WWKMD?, Episode 7: Marx in the Pharmacy: Why Insulin Has a Price Tag

This episode imagines Karl Marx confronting the American prescription drug market, using insulin as a vivid example of how capitalism transforms essential medicines into profitable commodities. It explores themes like use value versus exchange value, patents and monopoly power, evergreening, and how the state and private profit interact to socialize risk while privatizing gains.

The episode argues that high drug prices produce class-based harms—rationing, missed doses, and premature deaths—and asks whether life-saving medicines should be treated as market commodities at all, closing with the provocative question: was insulin always expensive, or only once it became profitable?