Di-ah-BIT-us. ----Life, Death and Insulin.

Life, Death and Insulin
As the cost of the lifesaving medication skyrockets, some desperate diabetics are rationing — and risking their lives. Was Alec Raeshawn Smith one of them?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/magazine/wp/2019/01/07/feature/insulin-is-a-lifesaving-drug-but-it-has-become-intolerably-expensive-and-the-consequences-can-be-tragic/

In 2017, as his 26th birthday neared, his mother had a new worry: He would no longer be covered by her health insurance through her job in the financial aid department of a community college. Nicole paid about $100 per biweekly paycheck for a family plan, and it had not cost extra to include Alec. With it, she says, he initially had been paying about $200 to $300 a month out-of-pocket for his diabetic supplies and prescriptions, an amount he could just afford. The restaurant did not offer insurance, and his $35,000 salary put him above the income limit for Medicaid in Minnesota.

Today, critics argue that the price of insulin has far outpaced any innovations. In the past decade alone, U.S. insulin list prices have tripled, according to an analysis of data from IBM Watson Health. In 1996, when Eli Lilly debuted its Humalog brand of insulin, the list price of a 10-milliliter vial was $21. The price of the same vial is now $275. Those costs can be compounded by the multiple vials that diabetics may require to survive each month. “It’s a very big problem,” says Robert Gabbay, chief medical officer at the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. “It’s a tragic barrier to care.”


The global insulin market is dominated by three companies: Eli Lilly, the French company Sanofi and the Danish firm Novo Nordisk. All three have raised list prices to similar levels. According to IBM Watson Health data, Sanofi’s popular insulin brand Lantus was $35 a vial when it was introduced in 2001; it’s now $270. Novo Nordisk’s Novolog was priced at $40 in 2001, and as of July 2018, it’s $289.

In the meantime, a portion of the more than 7?million diabetic Americans who take insulin are stuck with debilitating costs