Somebody recently asked me a good question.

What's the best money you ever spent?

I like this question.

And as you do, I thought about it maybe a little bit too much.

First I thought about my guitar, which has brought me like endless hours of enjoyment and self improvement.

And I thought about my car, which 10 years in no problems still kicking It got rear ended so hard once that their airbags went off.

Not a scratch on the car.

Condo Civic is looking for a brand ambassador.

You probably don't want me because I don't care very much about cars loses he commercials for the Honda Civic.

And I'm like That is deeply not the relationship I have with my car.

This is like Honda civic drives superiority.

I'm like Honda Civic Dr Toe work.

I kept thinking about it, and I came up with an answer that is absolutely the true answer.

There's no doubt in my mind about it.

Prescription drugs.

So between graduating from grad school and thus losing my insurance and when Obama care was enacted was about a three year period, and during those three years I spent a little over $10,000 on prescription drugs, and those drugs helped me not be in constant pain.

They helped my body taken nutrition, stop bleeding into itself, and those pills made it so that I didn't have a lifelong decrease in my physical ability.

The drug went from around 252 $400 while I was taking it.

I'm still taking it.

I now.

If I didn't have insurance, it would cost $1700 a month, and I would pay that, because when you're paying for the use of your own body, you will pay what you can.

It's the best money I've ever spent, but I'm not happy about it.

I'm not an economist, but I listen to some and a lot of them are convinced that we have made a massive mistake.

As an example, since I graduated from high school, the cost of insulin has increased 1000% and an economist in our society right now with dusty that the value of insulin to the economy has increased 1000%.

Except that, of course it hasn't.

The value delivered by the insulin is the same now as it was 20 years ago.

It's a healthier, longer life, and that is so much value.

I am so thankful for the medicine that I take.

It's been it's been a tremendous gift to me and to my family, to the people I love, like life would be much harder for them if it weren't for that and like it's the best money I've ever spent with.

That value is created whether or not we turn it into dollars.

The current system doesn't accept that according to prevailing economic theory, if they double the price of my medication, and that means that 25% of people who are currently taking it can't afford it anymore.

They have created more value because they're making more money.

They're not, obviously because they're fewer people being served by the medication.

They're creating less value on the argument that we hear is often that like they need the money in order to develop Maur drugs.

Well, leaving aside the fact that in the last 10 years prescription drug companies have spent more money buying back shares of their own stock to inflate their stock price than they have on research and development.

75% of revolutionary new drugs were funded by the National Institutes of Health by public money by our tax dollars at Is money well spent.

Prescription drug companies, on the other hand, have spent an awful lot of their research and development dollars figuring out how to turn existing medications into very similar but slightly different medications so that they could extend their patents because they, I think, believe that creating more money is the same is creating more value as long as business leaders keep believing the lies they were told in E con 101 We're gonna be destroying value when we think we're creating it.

And now, John, I'm going to hold up this $1000 savings bond that I got when I graduated from college because I want a good thumbnail for the video so people will watch it.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday if you want to read or think.

Maura, about what I've been talking about in this video checkout Mariana Matsu Cotto's the value of everything.

It's a book or just any podcast where she has been interviewed or given the talk.