Eli Lilly & Co. will cut the rice for some older insulins later this year, giving more patients immediate access to a limit on the cost they pay to fulfill prescriptions.
The steps, announced Wednesday, promise significant relief for some people with diabetes who must pay thousands of dollars in annual costs for the essential insulin. Lilly’s changes also come as lawmakers and patient advocates are pressuring drugmakers to address rising prices.
Lilly announced it will cut the list price of its most commonly prescribed insulin, Humalog, and another insulin, Humulin, by 70% in the fourth quarter, which begins in October.
List prices are what a drug manufacturer initially sets for a product, and is what people who don’t have insurance or plans with high deductibles sometimes have to pay.
A spokesperson for Lilly said the current list price for a 10 ml bottle of Humalog rapid-acting mealtime insulin is $274.70. It will drop to $66.40.
Likewise, she said the same amount of Humulin is currently trading at $148.70. This changes to $44.61.
Lilly CEO David Ricks said Wednesday that his company is making these changes to address issues that affect the price patients ultimately pay for their insulins.
He noted that discounts that Lilly offers off list prices often don’t reach patients through insurers or pharmacy benefit managers. A high deductible can lead to high bills at the pharmacy counter, especially at the beginning of the year when the co-payments are renewed.
“We know that the current U.S. health care system has gaps,” he said. “That makes a difficult disease like diabetes even more difficult to treat.”
Patient advocates have long advocated for insulin price reductions to help uninsured people who would not be affected by price caps tied to insurance coverage.
Lilly’s proposed cuts “could even lead to significant price cuts,” said Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University who studies the cost of drugs.
She noted that the move probably won’t affect Lilly much financially since the Insulins are older and some already have competition.
Lilly also said on Wednesday it would drop the price of its authorized generic version of Humalog to $25 a bottle starting in May.
In April, the company will launch a biosimilar insulin designed to compete with Sanofi’s Lantus.
Ricks said it will take time for insurers and the pharmacy system to implement their rate reductions, so the drugmaker will immediately limit monthly primary costs to $35 for people not covered by Medicare’s prescription drug program.
The drugmaker said the cap applies to people with commercial coverage and in most pharmacies.
Lilly said people without insurance can find savings cards on her website, InsulinAffordability.com, to get insulin for the same amount.
In January, the federal government began applying this limit to patients covered by its Medicare program for people age 65 or older or those with certain disabilities or medical conditions.
President Biden mentioned this cost cap during his annual State of the Union address last month. He called for a limit on insulin costs to $35 for everyone.
Biden said in a statement Wednesday that Lilly heeded his call.
“This is a big deal and it’s about time other manufacturers followed suit,” Biden said.
He also noted that Americans have been dealing with much higher drug costs “for far too long” than people in other countries.
In addition to Lilly and the French drug manufacturer Sanofi, there are other insulin manufacturers, including the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk.
Representatives for Sanofi and Novo Nordisk said their companies offer several programs that limit costs for those with and without insurance.
Insulin is produced by the pancreas and used by the body to convert food into energy. People with diabetes do not produce enough insulin.
People with type 1 diabetes need daily insulin injections to survive. According to the American Diabetes Assn. more than 8 million Americans use insulin.
Research has shown that insulin prices have more than tripled over the past two decades, increasing the pressure on drugmakers to help patients.
California has announced it will be making its own cheaper insulin. Drugmakers may also face competition from companies like the nonprofit Civica, which plans to make three insulins at a suggested retail price of no more than $30 per vial, a spokeswoman said.
Drugmakers may be seeing “the writing on the wall that high prices can’t last forever,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, which focuses on health care.
“Lilly is trying to face the problem and come across as the good guy in the public eye,” Levitt said, adding that nothing is stopping Lilly from raising prices again in the future.
Lilly officials said Wednesday that they had not raised the price of any of their insulins since 2017.
Ricks, Lilly’s CEO, said the drugmaker made the changes it announced Wednesday “because the time has come and it’s the right thing to do.”
Lilly of Indianapolis was the first company to market insulin in 1923, two years after scientists at the University of Toronto discovered it. The drugmaker then built its reputation producing insulin, even as it expanded into cancer treatments, antipsychotics and other drugs.
Humulin and Humalog, and their approved generic drug, combined to bring in more than $3 billion in sales for Lilly last year. The year before, they made more than $3.5 billion.
“These are treatments that have a very long and successful lifespan and should be less expensive for patients,” Dusetzina said.
Source: LA Times