Diabetes patients see insulin price skyrocket (USA)

[Northerner]

YORK, PA (WHTM) – Nearly 30 million people have diabetes in America, and the price for the lifesaving drug insulin tripled in a 10-year period.

Now, some patients are finding the drug has jumped in price again

“I went to pick up my prescription where I always do, and for the last six or seven months, it has been $106. Yesterday, it was $593. I said, ‘What? There is no way it jumped that much.’ And she said, ‘Yes, all diabetes medicine jumped on September 30’,” Robin Kann of Lancaster County said.

Kann now has to pay over $1,000 for two diabetes prescriptions per month. That’s on top of the $700 monthly insurance premium her and her husband pay.

http://wjhl.com/2016/10/21/diabetes-patients-see-insulin-price-skyrocket/

...and this is what the government wants to see here Banting wanted insulin to be free to anyone who needed it, he will be spinning in his grave

 

[mikeyB]

There can be no justification for this at all. Analog insulin is brewed in huge vats of genetically modified E Coli bacteria, or in the case of humalog, yeasts. They don't get paid for this, so where is the increased production cost from?

This is manufacturers trying to profit from Obamacare, at the same time as trying to destroy it, so they can profit even more.

 

[Northerner]

There can be no justification for this at all. Analog insulin is brewed in huge vats of genetically modified E Coli bacteria, or in the case of humalog, yeasts. They don't get paid for this, so where is the increased production cost from?

This is manufacturers trying to profit from Obamacare, at the same time as trying to destroy it, so they can profit even more.

It's not dissimilar to the bloke who bought the company that made that HIV drug, then hiked the price by several thousand percent 😱 There was outrage at that, but there seems to be far less fuss about something like this which surely affects millions of Americans (even here there are over 1m people using insulin - last figures I saw were 900k Type 2 and 400k Type 1). I frequently see articles in the business press that discuss the huge growth potential of the market for anything related to diabetes and how profits can be maximised 😡

 

[Abi]

Big Pharma is vile and sadly so necessary
Thank goodness for the NHS not only due to free prescriptions ( and even for those needing other medications which are not exempt, only paying a comparatively small prescription charge) but also the NHS being almost the sole UK purchaser and forcing prices down to a minimum
I believe that some Americans are effectively forced back onto the older insulins as their insurance coverage is inadequate and they cannot afford the newer insulins ( hardly surprising reading the above)
Personally I do not understand how soluble ( actrapid) and NPH can work for anyone who has to work due to timing of insulins, meals etc
It surprises me how there isn't legislation to keep costs down but then I suppose if it's individuals unfortunate to have the condition and not have excellent health insurance or a healthy wallet, rather than the tax payer, they are therefore considered fair game

 

[Lilian]

I was wakened to the price of insulin some years ago, when all this business of putting liquids in a bag started at Airports. I was so flustered trying to get things out and put them in the bag that when I got to the other side of security I could not find my insulin. Once I had gone through security I could not go back and retrace my steps. Someone said they would look for me but could not find it. The security people were kind enough to phone the hotel we stayed at the night before but they said it was not there. I had no alternative but to buy some when I got to Malta (prior to them joining the EU) at a local chemist. I explained what had happened and that I just needed two pens to get me through the week. However he would not break up a pack so I had to buy the pack of 5. It cost me £80.

 

[mikeyB]

Well there's a mark up. The NHS cost of your Humulin i is £21.49, and Humalog £29.50, each for a 5 pen pack. I think I chose the wrong career, I thought it was just jewellers who doubled the price of everything.😱

 

[HOBIE]

30 million in USA. The fella who comes up with a cure is going to be famous. 😉

 

[Matt Cycle]

If it was me and money or supply was a problem I'd have whatever they'd got and what I could afford. It's better than dying.

Slightly off track but it reminds me of the story of Eva Saxl in WWII where she and her husband fled from the Czechosolvakia to Shanghai where she was diagnosed as Type 1 at the age of 19. After the Japanese occupied China all the pharmacies closed and supplies of insulin dried up. She and her husband decided to make their own using a book and using the pancreas of water buffaloes. She treated herself and the others in the Shanghai ghetto where they lived and survived through the war. She later became an advocate for people with Type 1. She died in 2002 at the age of 81. Remarkable lady.

 

[mikeyB]

I'm determined to say something to follow that wonderful story.

So I have.

 

[Lilian]

If someone came up with a cure for diabetes they would either be paid off to say nothing or got rid of somehow. The pharmaceutical companies are sitting on a gold mine and would not want to change it.

That is a fascinating story about Eva Saxi. I have an Austrian friend who came here at the beginning of the war. Unfortunately they would not let her father come with them but they did allow him to go to Japan. When Japan came into the war they rounded up all foreigners to put in camps, and he was put in one of them. He was diabetic but my friend does not know whether he was type 1 or 2, because she was a very little girl at the time. He did not have insulin with him. However whilst he was in the camp they only fed them one tiny bowl of rice a day. Whilst others were getting very ill on this, he actually thrived on it and was very well. When they were freed and he came to England to join his family his diabetes returned.