Price increases drive spike in insulin costs
The price of insulin per person has doubled over the past 5 years, and it's not due to an increase in demand.
The price of insulin has doubled per person over the last 5 years, even though the number of users certainly hasn’t.
In fact, the average daily insulin use during the same period rose just 3 percent, according to a study from the Health Care Cost Institute. The study authors said that the per-person spending increase is due to price jumps, not more users.
In 2012, a person using insulin paid $7.80 for an average amount of insulin per day. In 2016, that had risen to $15 per day. People with high-deductible health plans and those without insurance have been hit the hardest by the increase.
Related: Walgreens to pay $269 million over insulin fraud allegations
Washington, D.C.-based HCCI tracks insurance claims data on about 80 million people and uses information from Medicare and four of the largest health insurers: UnitedHealth Group, Aetna, now owned by CVS Health Corp, Humana Inc. and Kaiser Permanente.
“It’s not that individuals are using more insulin or that new products are particularly innovative or provide immense benefits,” Jeannie Fuglesten Biniek, a senior researcher at HCCI and the report’s coauthor, told Reuters in a phone interview. “Use is pretty flat, and the price changes are occurring in both older and newer products. That surprised me. The exact same products are costing double.”
Not only are Democratic lawmakers offering legislation that would decrease prescription drug prices for consumers, they have also sent letters to a dozen drugmakers wanting information on price increases. The big three insulin makers, Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly and Co, Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk A/S and France’s Sanofi SA, are among the firms contacted.
Just this year, the report says, Sanofi boosted some insulin product prices between 4.4 and 5.2 percent, and Novo Nordisk increased some insulin prices by 4.9 percent. As of Jan. 17, it adds, Lilly had not raised prices on its insulins.
In October, the attorney general of Minnesota sued the big three and accused them of deceptively raising prices, and there’s a similar proposed class action suit on behalf of patients is pending in New Jersey’s federal court.
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