Tag: insulin
Following Biden's Medicare Rule, Eli Lilly Caps Insulin Cost At $35

Following Biden's Medicare Rule, Eli Lilly Caps Insulin Cost At $35

Drug manufacturer Eli Lilly announced on March 1 that it would cap the monthly out-of-pocket cost to patients of a prescription for insulin at $35 a month.

The move comes after the enactment of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which includes a monthly $35 cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs for Medicare recipients that took effect on January 1.

It also follows President Joe Biden's remarks during his State of the Union address on February 7:

Every day, millions need insulin to control their diabetes so they can stay alive. Insulin has been around for 100 years. It costs drug companies just $10 a vial to make. But, Big Pharma has been unfairly charging people hundreds of dollars – and making record profits. Not anymore.

We capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors on Medicare. But there are millions of other Americans who are not on Medicare, including 200,000 young people with Type I diabetes who need insulin to save their lives.Let’s finish the job this time.

Let’s cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American who needs it.

Asked during an interview with CNN on Wednesday morning, "Why now?" Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said: "This is a culmination of about seven years of work we've been doing to reduce the price of our insulins. … But with the change last year in the Medicare Part D benefit, the senior benefit, to $35, we think that should be the new standard in America. And so, while we could wait for Congress to act or the health care system in general to apply that standard, we're just applying it ourselves."

"Lilly is taking these actions to make it easier to access Lilly insulin and help Americans who may have difficulty navigating a complex healthcare system that may keep them from getting affordable insulin," the company said in a press release.

According to the American Diabetes Association, 8.4 million Americans use insulin, a synthetic version of a hormone that regulates the amount of glucose in the blood. Eli Lilly and two other pharmaceutical companies produce 90 percent of the world's insulin. The two other drug manufacturers, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, have not followed Lilly's change in policy.

Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law on August 16, 2022, following its passage in Congress with only Democratic votes in favor of the bill. When the law was being debated in the Senate, Democrats proposed an amendment that would have capped out-of-pocket costs for insulin for many with private insurance, in addition to those with coverage through Medicare. Most Republicans opposed it, and they succeeded in defeating it.

"Last year, we capped insulin prices for seniors on Medicare, but there was more work to do. I called on Congress – and manufacturers – to lower insulin prices for everyone else," Biden tweeted on Wednesday in response to Lilly's announcement. "Today, Eli Lilly is heeding my call. Others should follow."

Rep. Lucy McBath (D-GA), who worked on the original legislation to cap costs, tweeted: "Because of my bill with @SenatorWarnock [Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia] to lower insulin costs for every patient in America to $35 a month, Eli Lilly has announced they will cut the cost of their insulin. This expands on our program that caps monthly out-of-pocket costs to $35 a month or less."

"When Democrats capped the price of insulin at $35 for millions every Republican voted no and then blocked expanding the cap for all Americans. Republicans want insulin to stay expensive. This move today is because of Democrats," Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) tweeted.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

California Announces Plan To Make Its Own Insulin For Patients At Low Cost

California Announces Plan To Make Its Own Insulin For Patients At Low Cost

The state of California is entering the pharmaceutical industry. Specifically, it will start manufacturing insulin to ensure an affordable supply of the essential drug for the state’s patients living with diabetes. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom made the announcement late last week..


Newsom announced that $100 million from the 2022-23 state budget would be allocated to “contract and make our own insulin at a cheaper price, close to at cost, and to make it available to all.” Half of that funding would go toward the development of a “low-cost” insulin and the remaining $50 million would go toward building a facility to manufacture insulin that would “provide new, high-paying jobs and a stronger supply chain for the drug.”

“Nothing epitomizes market failures more than the cost of insulin,” Newsom said. “Many Americans experience out-of-pocket costs anywhere from $300 to $500 per month for this lifesaving drug. California is now taking matters into our own hands.”


This comes as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is vowing to put a bipartisan bill cooked up by Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) on the floor “very soon” after the Senate returns to work next week.“There should be nothing remotely partisan about making sure Americans don’t go broke trying to manage their diabetes,” Schumer said. “At least one in four insulin users report rationing their use because they can’t afford it, putting their health and lives at risk in the process.”

But of course there’s something partisan there. Republicans don’t want to give Democrats a win. Since Collins was involved in this, you wouldn’t be wrong to smell a rat. Last winter, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) introduced a straightforward bill to cap insulin prices, requiring insurers to cap insulin costs to their customers at $35 a month. Warnock has made that legislation a big part of his reelection campaign, since he’s up this cycle. Republicans didn’t want to give him a political win, so enter Susan Collins and the usual “bipartisan” diverting ruse.

Entirely predictably, five of the Republicans most likely to help Collins get the 10 she needed to break a filibuster (were she really trying to get this passed) are raising objections over the bill, and demanding hearings. Republican Sens. Pat Toomey (PA), John Barrasso (WY), Steve Daines (MT), Rob Portman (OH), and Ben Sasse (NE), who all sit on the Senate Finance Committee, are opposing a vote before having hearings. Which means they wouldn’t vote for it on the floor without hearings (or probably even with them).

That’s not the worst thing: It’s also not a great bill. It sets up a complicated insurance process that would ultimately result in higher premium costs for people on private insurance as well as for Medicare, and would discourage future price competition among manufacturers.

The California answer is ultimately a better one: public manufacture and distribution of the life-saving drug. If a consortium of states—toss in Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, for example—could be created, then real competition that could drive costs down would exist.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Nearly Every House Republican Votes Against Cap On Insulin Pricing

Nearly Every House Republican Votes Against Cap On Insulin Pricing

Nearly all House Republicans on Thursday night voted against a bill that would dramatically lower the cost of insulin, the life-saving diabetes drug that has skyrocketed in price in recent years.

The House passed the Affordable Insulin Now Act by a vote of 232-193, with every Democrat and just 12 Republicans voting for the bill. If enacted, the bill would cap the price for a month supply of the drug at $35, or 25 percent of the negotiated insurance price.

According to the website GoodRx Health, the average price for insulin spiked by 54 percent between 2014 and 2019, an increase that's led to insulin rationing, a dangerous and sometimes deadly tactic in which diabetics use less insulin than needed in order to avoid depleting their supply of the expensive drug.

"Insulin prices are outrageous! Diabetics, like me, pay almost $100 for a unit that costs $12 in Canada. It causes some to ration or skip days to survive," Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-NJ) tweeted. "Today, I voted for a bill to cap insulin prices at $35 per month. No one should have to choose between food or medicine!"

Republicans condemned the bill as government interference in health care.

"Today it's the government fixing the price of insulin. What's next?" Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said during debate on the bill. "Gas? Food? History tells us that price-fixing doesn't work."

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), while calling the legislation "another big government bill that claims to serve the American people by subverting basic economic theory with the proposed codification of government price controls," blamed the rising cost of insulin on increased demand due to Americans getting fatter.

"The number of diabetes cases in the U.S. has nearly doubled. The demand for insulin has increased and the requisite price increase has followed suit. In other words, the price of insulin increases as waistlines increase," Gaetz tweeted.

However, polling finds that voters support capping the cost of the drug.

A Data for Progress survey in November 2021 found that 87 percent support capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month.

Provisions that would have lowered prescription drug prices were included in President Joe Biden's Build Back Better framework, which stalled in the Senate.

It's unclear whether the standalone insulin bill can pass in the Senate.

Democrats would need to convince 10 Republicans to allow the bill to come up for a vote to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to stop a filibuster of it.

Why The Drug Industry Can Still Gouge Us

Why The Drug Industry Can Still Gouge Us

To be American is a wonderful thing most of the time. There are moments, however, when it is downright humiliating. Can you imagine a more pitiful scene than a busload of Americans traveling 815 miles from Minneapolis to a Walmart in London, Ontario, Canada, to buy insulin at a 10th — a 10th! — of the price charged in the United States?

Dollar-wise, the difference is not modest. In the U.S., one vial of insulin costs around $300. In Canada, it’s $30.

From 2012 to 2016, drugmakers nearly doubled the U.S. price of a medication that was invented almost a century ago. Type 1 diabetics saw their yearly insulin costs soar from about $2,900 to about $5,700. Deb Souther, a woman making the trip, said that even with insurance she’s been paying $700 a month for this essential medicine.

We’re not talking about a take-it-or-leave-it product. These are not lawn chairs or T-shirts, which, in any case, are manufactured by numerous companies competing for your consumer dollar. We are talking about insulin, a lifesaving drug for diabetics produced by three companies.

We’re talking about lives. Diabetics who’ve been cutting back on their prescribed insulin because they couldn’t afford it have been dying as a result. One was Alec Smith, who, after aging out of his mother’s health insurance plan when he was 26, rationed his insulin, assuming he could survive until he saved money to buy what he needed. He was found dead in his apartment.

We might ask how the pharmaceutical industry gets away with extorting Americans with its your-money-or-your life demands. The answer is that other countries negotiate with the drugmakers to set reasonable prices. Republicans in Washington, on the other hand, have served the American public to them on a silver platter.

The American government is not allowed to negotiate, with one notable exception. The Department of Veterans Affairs obtains deep discounts on drugs through direct negotiation. By contrast, the Republicans’ Medicare drug benefit of 2003 specifically bans the U.S. government from bargaining on prices for medications.

If Medicare Part D, the drug benefit, were to pay prescription prices similar to what the VA pays, Medicare would enjoy a savings of about 44 percent on the top 50 oral drugs, according to an analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine. In dollar terms, the savings in 2016 would be over $14 billion.

When President Trump campaigned in 2016, he vowed to have the government negotiate on Medicare drug price. After the election, the promise vanished.

Right before the 2018 midterms, Trump suggested a modest plan whereby Medicare Part B — the part covering drugs administered by doctors and hospitals — would use an International Pricing Index as a benchmark for setting prices. With a presidential election looming, Trump seems to be reviving that kind of talk again.

Of course, this is just more pre-election trickery. Even so, some Republicans expressed alarm at the very idea, calling it government “price controls.” They apparently prefer that drug companies control the prices.

Trump’s secretary of health and human services happens to be Alex Azar, a former Eli Lilly executive. Lilly’s Humalog pen is seen as one of the villains in insulin price gouging.

Azar has diverted blame to socialism. “The American senior and the American patient have been too long been asked to overpay for drugs to subsidize the socialist systems of Europe,” Azar charged.

And who’s been asking — no, forcing — the American people to pay so much? The drug industry and it’s (mostly) Republican enforcers.

Americans lining up at a Canadian Walmart prescription drug counter to buy lifesaving drugs at a 10th the U.S. price must have been a pathetic sight. Only a change in Washington, starting with the White House, will end the outrage.