Insulin costs for people with diabetes are too high. Can California produce a cheaper version? – Vox.com
There are few better emblems of the failures of the US system of medical care than its inability to consistently provide insulin to Americans who need it.
The drug was discovered 100 years ago, and it provides essential and ongoing treatment for millions of people living with diabetes, one of the most common chronic diseases in the country. And yet one in six Americans with diabetes who use insulin say they ration their supply because of the cost. Some people…….
There are few better emblems of the failures of the US system of medical care than its inability to consistently provide insulin to Americans who need it.
The drug was discovered 100 years ago, and it provides essential and ongoing treatment for millions of people living with diabetes, one of the most common chronic diseases in the country. And yet one in six Americans with diabetes who use insulin say they ration their supply because of the cost. Some people end up spending nearly half of their disposable income on a medicine they must take to stay alive.
Though insulin generally costs less than $10 per dose to produce, some versions of the drug have a list price above $200. This is in part because, in the US, a warped market has allowed three companies to dominate the insulin business.
But if some states have their way, that may be about to change.
With California leading the way, a handful of states are considering trying to disrupt the market for essential medications, starting with insulin. The plan would be to manufacture and sell insulin themselves for a price that is roughly equivalent to the cost of production.
Their premise: Take away the private market’s profit motive and maybe states can deliver affordable insulin as a wholly public enterprise, run by civil workers, that does not need to make money. Because these states buy a lot of drugs too, through their Medicaid programs and the health plans for government workers, they would also reap the rewards if those drugs are cheaper.
“If we can drop the cost of insulin, we don’t have to make money on selling it. We get the savings as a purchaser,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, which has been a leading advocate of the public insulin plan and provided guidance to state legislators and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
As his colleague Chris Noble, who has Type 1 diabetes, put it: “Just providing an actual at-cost alternative has the potential to really be disruptive for the pharmaceutical industry.”
States have become more ambitious in their policies for tackling the insulin affordability crisis because the scale of the problem continues to grow and the federal government seems capable of taking only limited action to address it. The price of some insulin had grown by 1,000 percent over the past 20 years, far outpacing inflation. And the number of Americans with diabetes is projected to grow to nearly 55 million by 2030, from the current figure of roughly 37 million.
Medicare, the federal health insurance program for seniors, is about to institute a $35 per month …….
