For people who need insulin and have insurance, a bill that just passed the House will be a big help, capping the copay for the life-sustaining prescription at $35 a month. But the bill doesn’t help the uninsured, says Kaiser Health News reporter Bram Sable-Smith. He explains the legislation and opens up about his own diagnosis for Type 1 diabetes.
A study published this month in the journal Health Affairs found that 14% of people who use insulin in the United States face what is described as a “catastrophic” level of spending on the medication, meaning that after paying for other essentials, such as food and housing, they spend at least 40% of their remaining income on insulin.
The study’s estimate, which covered 2017 and 2018, didn’t include other costs related to diabetes care, such as glucose monitors, insulin pumps or other medications.
The high cost can be attributed in part to “evergreening,” a process in which drug companies make incremental improvements to their products that can extend the life of their patents, said Dr. Kevin Riggs, a physician at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine. He co-wrote a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015 that described the century-long history of the drug.
Extending patents can discourage generic drugs from being developed, Riggs said, allowing drugmakers with exclusive rights to their insulin to charge whatever the market will bear. And as supply chains have become more complicated over the years, costs have ballooned.
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“And so that means those prices have gone up crazy,” he said.
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