A new research shows that the price of insulin for diabetic patients has risen 200% from 2002 to 2013. “While these drugs can be better for some patients, they are much more costly than the human insulin they replaced”. In the 1980s, synthetic “analog” insulins mimicked the body’s natural pattern of insulin release.
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“The evidence that the advantages of analog insulin are worth the price for everyone with Type 2 diabetes is just not there, at least not in my mind”, he says. Also, because doctors are prescribing insulin more often, especially for people with type 2 diabetes.
During the same time period the cost of other diabetes drugs were either stable or dropped.
Findings from the new study are published as a letter in the April 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Plus, the average amount of insulin used rose from 171 milliliters to 206 milliliters. Such medications include metformin, sulfonylureas, glitazones, DPP-4 inhibitors, amylin analogs and GLP-1 receptors agonists. The annual cost of all the other diabetes drugs combined was about $503 per person, the study found. Prior studies had found a link between smoking and increased insulin resistance.
“After eating, the pancreas automatically releases an adequate quantity of insulin to move the glucose present in our blood into the cells, as soon as glucose enters the cells blood-glucose levels drop”, it says.
That means until someone has reached that deductible, they may be paying the list price for their insulin, instead of the price negotiated by their insurer.
The MNT, quoting the Williams Textbook of Endocrinology, said more than 382 million people throughout the world had diabetes in 2013. Someone with a lot of chronic illness expenses may not want to be in a high-deductible plan because of the high upfront costs, he explained.
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Lilly and Sanofi have programs to help people who can not afford their medications. Another reason for the rise in insulin prices could be that drugmakers are girding themselves for the pending price competition expected to come with the introduction of biosimilar treatments to the US market. World Health Day this year focuses on diabetes and calls for scaling up efforts to prevent, care for and detect the disease to arrest the global epidemic which is hitting the low and middle income countries the most.
