Which specific laws are you referring to? Older formulations of insulin have been out of patent for many years, so in principle any company can produce generics for sale at lower prices. It can be expensive for generics manufacturers to get through the FDA certification process.
Obviously: the ones that require expensive certifications to make and sell drugs, the reason that there are only a few brands’ products for sale.
There are lots of people who would happily produce insulin and undercut the existing prices, but the pharmaceutical industry pays a lot of money to keep the barriers to entry in place.
> any company can produce generics for sale at lower prices
Which maybe explains precisely why we don’t see it happen: race to the bottom on pricing means reduced profitability. Why would you sign up your company to make less money?
> There are a lot of companies producing generic drugs. Teva alone sold $9B worth in 2021.
Yes! Note though that I'm not claiming a company cannot make money from producing generics.
But the question remains: why isn't some generic drug company then producing and making a killing (because they could underprice) in the insulin market? I think my original argument is the most likely reason, but I'm open to a stronger argument.
