Insulin prices skyrocket, putting many diabetics in a bind
Insulin, a life-saving medication used to treat diabetes, was discovered nearly 100 years ago, yet the price of the drug has now spiked by 700 percent in just two decades.
In early November, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont Independent, pointed out that certain insulins had risen from $21 a vial in 1996 to $255 a vial in 2016.
Some have likened the insulin price boosts to the recent price hikes for EpiPen — the life-saving medication needed when someone has a serious allergic reaction.
Edith Prentiss, 64, of New York City, knows all too well what the rising cost of insulin means for her. She needs insulin to treat her diabetes and stay alive, yet living on a fixed income has forced her to make tough choices on which drug she can afford.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/insulin-prices-skyrocket-putting-many-diabetics-in-a-bind/ar-AAkV1W1?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=edgsp
= new reply since forum marked as read
Improvements in the drug itself doesn't really explain these hikes.
And there really shouldn't be confusion over whether to lay blame at Insurers or Big Pharma - it's both as well as their enabler, the FDA. The excessive regulatory practices at the FDA have had nasty consequences for the consumer. Mylan enjoyed a monopoly on Epi Pens because it had no competitors - the sluggishness of the FDA in clearing its backlog has had the unintended consequence ( some public choice theorists would say the intended consequence) of enabling monopolies to thrive while killing competition. Whichever it is, we need regulatory reform - by that I don't mean deregulation, but involving the input of independent experts, stopping Pharmaceutical companies hording and preventing access to their patents ( it may seem reasonable for companies to protect their patents to the hilt but in the case of HIV medicine or other life saving drugs like Insulin, locking off access to certain patents , even to develop investigational drugs, is a prohibitive practice that again kills competition and is inhumane).
I don't know enough about the Insulin Medicine market, other than the fact that Metformin continues to be fairly cheap because there's a generic version but it shouldn't be so difficult to regulate efficiently in ways that protect the consumer/patient, incentivises pharma to expand their R&D and provide affordable drugs and insurance coverage for a wide range of drugs.
