![]() ![]() As those rebate payments have increased, so has the cost of insulin, according to research by Adam Fein, an industry consultant and drug pricing expert at the Drug Channels Institute, a research firm.įor example, between 20, Fein notes that Eli Lilly's insulin drug Humalog went up by 52 percent, from $391 per patient, per month to $594. There's another force at work that causes the price of insulin and other drugs to rise-the complex drug rebate system.Ī rebate is money a drug manufacturer pays middlemen in the insurance industry-called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs-to get their drugs covered by insurance companies. "We have a vulnerable population of millions willing to pay anything to have access to lifesaving drugs," he says. But by developing them, they were also able to create expensive, branded products.Īnd because many people with diabetes need the drugs to survive, companies could charge almost whatever price they wanted-and increase those prices repeatedly, says Vincent Rajkumar, M.D., from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who has studied and written on this topic. So drug manufacturers developed new types of insulin: long-acting, medium-acting, and rapid-acting, as well as various hybrids, which only had to be used once or twice a day and offered more consistent glucose control.Ĭompanies say these new versions give people with diabetes better options. But it was also inconvenient, requiring people to give themselves multiple shots a day. ![]() Regular insulin-which has been available for nearly 100 years-has long been so cheap that no company bothered to make a generic version of it. One reason the manufacturers gave is innovation. Insulin price increases of the last few years caught the attention of Congress, which in 20 held multiple hearings with CEOs of the three companies that make insulin in the U.S.-Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi. ![]()
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