(Photo: Guido Krzikowski/Bloomberg)
U.S. drug makers are now getting $15 billion in revenue per year from sales of insulin — a generic drug that keeps people with diabetes alive — and that's up from about $5 billion per year just 15 years ago, according to Dr. Alvin Powers, a representative for the Endocrine Society.
Yale University researchers concluded in 2013 that the high price of insulin may be responsible for as much as $5 billion in annual spending on preventable hospital care for people with diabetes, according to Dr. Kasia Lipska, a Yale medical school endocrinologist.
(Related: Lilly Offers Half-Price Insulin)
Powers and Lipska testified about the effects of high insulin prices on drug makers' revenue, and patients' hospital bills, Tuesday, at a hearing on insulin prices organized by the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee.
Insulin Primer
About 7.4 million U.S. residents need to take insulin to control their diabetes, according to a hearing memo release by the committee staff.
Researchers discovered insulin in 1923. They took care to make the process for producing insulin available to all, according to the staff memo.
Today, however, although the cost of manufacturing a vial of insulin ranges from about $2.28 to $6.34 per vial, the typical list price for insulin is about $400 per vial, according to the staff memo.
The Hearing
Gail deVore, a hearing witness who has Type 1 diabetes, testified that she takes four vials a month, and that the full price of the four vials is about $1,600.
Even when health insurance is available, the high list price may affect patients with high-deductible health plans who are buying insulin early in the year, and patients who need to take a type of insulin not included in the plan formulary, deVore said, according to a written version of her testimony on the committee website.
