The push to bring insulin prices down in America
“Move to the back if you’ve lost your life savings to the drug companies,” shouts a woman walking by your correspondent. A spirited group follows her to the end of a long queue for a Senate hearing on insulin prices on May 10th. In the room David Ricks of Eli Lilly, a large American drug firm, testifies that insulin, used to regulate blood-sugar levels for diabetics, is cheap and even free in some instances. “If you contact Lilly today, we will ship you a month’s supply at no cost with one question: ‘What’s your address?’” he says. Those dressed in gear with slogans like “Insulin for All” shake their heads in disbelief. Drug companies may be offering cheap insulin, but it is not reaching all patients.
The high price of drugs is a long-running grievance for Americans—and insulin is a flashpoint, since more than 8m of them depend on it to survive. A standard unit that costs on average $9 in other rich countries sets Americans back $99. A study in 2021 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a journal, found that 1.3m people skipped or reduced insulin doses due to cost.
Perhaps Eli Lilly’s programme needs time to work out the kinks, or the pharmacy charged more on top. But this is not the first time such a scheme has caused problems. For years pharma firms have offered a patchwork of plans to help customers afford insulin and other drugs. Some are for almost anyone, others for the poor or uninsured. But they tend to be difficult for people to access, says Stacie Dusetzina, a drug-pricing expert at Vanderbilt University.
2023-05-25 07:59:03
Source from www.economist.com
rnrn