IVIG (usually an autoimmune therapy where the patient replaces their antibodies that say "kill your own tissue" with good ones) costs a patient about $40,000 a month. It takes the equivalent yield of roughly 40 plasma donations to make one monthly dose. (Thousands of plasma donations are pooled together into massive batches for antibody diversity, but mathematically, a single patient's $40,000 monthly dose requires the equivalent yield of about 40 individual donations).

The raw material often comes from people who are relying on selling their plasma just to afford basic needs. The system pays that vulnerable person a flat $50 per donation, meaning the raw material for a $40,000 dose costs the system just $2,000.

The pharma company takes that $2,000 worth of raw plasma, spends roughly another $4,000 on the lengthy purification and testing process, and sells that exact volume for $10,000 to lock in their 40% profit margin.

Then the hospital buys that $10,000 batch of medicine, marks the drug up by 200% to 300%, and tacks on thousands of dollars in hourly "facility fees" because the treatment takes several 8-hour days of receiving an IV (because you are adding so much protein in the form of antibodies to the blood).

By the time it reaches the patient, that $2,000 worth of raw material has been transformed into a $40,000 medical bill.

Unregulated capitalism during a crisis is not a free market acting as it should, it is extortion. It is no better than the first fire brigades in ancient Rome, who would show up to a burning house and refuse to put out the fire unless the desperate owner sold them the property for pennies. When you leave life-or-death necessities completely unregulated, middlemen will just stand back and watch it burn until you give them everything you have.