Traditional Insulins Are Cheaper Than Modern Insulins
Average retail prices of Novolin and Humulin have gone down, or held steady, while prices of modern rapid- and long-acting insulins continue to go up. On average, traditional insulins now cost less than half of what modern insulins cost.
Why? Traditional insulins have historically been cheaper than their newer competitors. Modern insulins offer better blood sugar control but are synthetic analogs of traditional insulins, which makes them more difficult to produce.
Additionally, when patents on Humulin and Novolin expired around 2000, manufacturers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk had to test new pricing strategies to remain competitive.
In 2017, for example, Novo Nordisk partnered with CVS to offer Novolin at roughly 80% less than its list price. Both Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have also worked with Walmart to heavily discount Novolin and Humulin under Walmarts ReliOn line of insulin products.
Retail partnerships havent been their only strategy, though. Eli Lilly had been increasing prices for Humulin every 6 months until May 2017, when they decided to stop further increases. In fact, prices of traditional Humulin and Novolin insulins have held fairly steady since then.
and are currently the cheapest traditional insulins, with average unit prices as low as $0.03.
Prediabetes Weight Loss: Can It Help
If you have prediabetes, you are at risk of developing type 2 diabetes because prediabetes means that your blood sugar levels are higher than normal but not high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes. Fortunately, prediabetes can often be treated with weight loss. In this article, we will explore the relationship between prediabetes and weight loss and find out if losing weight is an effective treatment for prediabetes. We will also cover all other treatment options available to you if you have prediabetes and what causes it.
The Astronomical Price Of Insulin Hurts American Families
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A woman from Minnesota holds up her U.S. bottle of NovoLog insulin and a Canadian box of NovoRapid, which she bought at a pharmacy in Ontario, Canada, June 29, 2019
Drug companies charge more for insulin in the United States than in nearly three dozen other countries RAND researchers examinedand it’s not even close. The average list price for a vial of insulin in Canada was $12. Step across the border into America, and it’s $98.70.
Those differences help explain why insulin has become a symbol of the high cost of American health care. Its prices have shot up in recent years, for reasons that are opaque at best, with those who can least afford it often paying the most. Reining in those prices has become the rare political cause embraced by Democrats and Republicans alike.
This isn’t just some academic question: ‘How do our prices compare with those in other countries?’ said Andrew Mulcahy, a senior policy researcher at RAND who specializes in health care economics and led the study. It’s becoming a very practical question, because there are ideas out there to do something about it, and they can benefit from this kind of analysis.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services asked RAND to investigate how American insulin prices compare with those in other parts of the world. Researchers obtained list prices for all types of insulin from 33 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas. Plotted on a graph, the U.S. prices stand alone.
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Patients Have Been Rationing Insulin Amid High Prices
According to recent studies by the CDC and the Annals of Internal Medicine, one in five Americans with diabetes has rationed their use of the drug due to high prices.
This includes skipping doses, delaying refills, or using a lower dose than needed in order to save money. Roughly 1.3 million adults, or 16.5 percent of those who need insulin, have resorted to rationing.
Uninsured Americans as well as those with private health insurance were the most likely to ration insulin. Rationing was also found to be more common among type 1 diabetics, which is concerning because rationing could lead to diabetic coma or death. Rationing for type 2 diabetics also carries long-term health risks including heart, kidney, and eye disease.
Generics And Biosimilars Are Driving Down The Overall Price Of Insulins
Since 2019, the overall retail price of insulins has declined by about 5%. Most of this decline can be seen as a result of recent approvals of generics and biosimilars.
In 2019, Eli Lilly released the first generic insulin, insulin lispro, the counterpart to the popular rapid-acting insulin Humalog. Since then, the FDA has approved generic versions of Humalog 75/25 , , , and most recently, Lantus .
Retail prices for generic insulin lispro and insulin aspart are currently about half that of Humalog and Novolog, respectively. The same goes for the generic mixed insulins, insulin lispro 75/25 and insulin aspart 70/30, compared to Humalog 75/25 and Novolog 70/30, respectively.
Generics have been instrumental in bringing down costs for some patients. Instead of paying a retail price of over $700 for a package of 5 Humalog KwikPens, for example, patients can now pay closer to $300 for a package of 5 generic insulin lispro KwikPens. However, weve seen that limited insurance coverage can prevent some patients from accessing these savings.
Like generics, follow-on products have also helped to bring down insulin prices overall. Generics contain the exact replicas of the active ingredients in a brand-name medication. But biologic drugs like insulin are nearly impossible to recreate. So sometimes, manufacturers make close copies of them instead, known as follow-ons or biosimilars. Biosimilars tend to be more expensive than generics but less expensive than brands.
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Ways To Save On Insulin
Its difficult to predict where drug prices will be in the future, but if you take insulin, we hope our analysis gives you some ideas for how to talk to your provider about affordable options. Here are more ways you can save:
1) Use a manufacturer savings card or patient assistance program. Major insulin manufacturers Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi-Aventis, and MannKind offer copay cards and patient assistance programs for patients with and without insurance coverage. In many cases, these programs can reduce out-of-pocket costs to as little as $0 per month. For more information, just search for your drug on goodrx.com, and click on Savings Tips for details.
2) Shop around. GoodRx offers discounts on insulin drugs, which can save you as much as 50% off the full retail price. At goodrx.com, you can also compare insulin prices at different pharmacies in your area and find information about discount programs at specific pharmacies.
3) Appeal your coverage. If you have insurance and your plan doesnt cover the insulin you need, ask your doctor about submitting an appeal. Your insurance company may require a prior authorization or step therapy before you can fill your prescription, but its worth trying if you want to get your insulin covered.
Co-contributors:Diane Li, Hannah McQueen, Swetha Pola
Methodology
A note about insulin use
Caps On Insulin Costs
In 2020, the average out-of-pocket spending for insulin was $54 per prescription, but depending on the type of insulin, many people paid $70-$115. Over 3.3 million people on Medicare use insulin, and on average, they are spending four times more annually on the drug now than they were just 15 years ago .
Starting in 2023, Medicare will have to cap the cost of insulin so that beneficiaries do not pay more than $35 per month, regardless of whether or not they have met their deductible.
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Additional Costs Associated With Feline Diabetes
Cat insulin isn’t the only cost associated with treating cat diabetes. Other costs can include diagnoses, syringes, food, and vet visits. While insulin will be responsible for most of your expenses while treating and managing diabetes in cats, you should also factor in the other costs to understand how much treatment will cost.
Why Insulin Is So Expensive In The Us
In the 1920s, insulins three discoverers sold the patent to the University of Toronto for $1 each, because co-inventor Frederick Banting said insulin belongs to the world. But in the last century, the opposite has become true in the U.S., as the price of insulin has risen dramatically: the average price nearly tripled between 2002 and 2013, according to the American Diabetes Association.
In 2021, the Senate Finance Committee released a report examining the list price of insulin products by three major manufacturers. They found that one commonly used insulin had increased $101 from just five years earlier, while another saw a $159 increase during the same period.
The reasons for this are complicated. Drug pricing involves multiple stakeholders ranging from manufacturers to pharmacies to health care plans, a complex chain that often makes it difficult to trace the source of the price increases, says Murdock. There is a lack of transparency, she says. Prices have risen dramatically with little explanation.
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How Much Is Insulin In America For Uninsured Patients
The cost of insulin can be devastating for an uninsured person who requires it to manage their diabetes. With the average price ranging from $175 to $300 per vial of insulin, it can become impossible to afford the medications you need. There are programs to help underinsured or uninsured patients afford their diabetic medications and supplies. Ask your doctor for references to national and local programs that can help lower your medication costs. Uninsured Americans with diabetes are more likely to be using older, less effective insulin formulations than those with private insurance or Medicaid. Although these older forms of insulin are more cost-effective, 68% of uninsured patients pay full insulin costs.
Insulin Is An Extreme Financial Burden For Over 14% Of Americans Who Use It
Over 30 million Americans have diabetes, and more than 7 million of them require daily insulin. But the cost of the drug has risen considerably in the last decade. Though U.S. lawmakers are considering policies to address the challenge, not much is known about who is most burdened by insulin prices.
In a new study, Yale researchers provide much-needed data on Americans who use insulin, whether and how theyre insured, and who is most at risk of extreme financial burden. According to their findings, 14% of people who use insulin in the United States face what are described as a catastrophic levels of spending on insulin, meaning they spent at least 40% of their postsubsistence income what is available after paying for food and housing on insulin.
The findings were published July 5 in Health Affairs.
In 1996, when the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly debuted its Humalog brand of insulin, a fast-acting type of insulin, a vial cost $21. Now it costs more than 10 times that, said Kasia Lipska, an associate professor at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study.
And its not just Humalog. Insulin list prices, on average, have more than doubled in the last decade. This is not inflation, theres much more going on, said Lipska.
And we have no reason to believe that will change anytime soon, said Baylee Bakkila, a medical student at Yale School of Medicine and lead author of the study.
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How To Get These New Medicare Savings
This is the important part: Getting these savings is not automatic, its optional. So patients need to pay attention and actively opt in.
People will need to choose one of the new enhanced plans to get the savings, whether its a standalone prescription drug plan or a Medicare Advantage plan with optional prescription drug coverage. The insulin cost savings is not included in Medicare basic plans, which typically dont include the best coverage or savings offers for prescriptions, but have a lower premium.
At the time of the announcement on May 26, a total of 88 insurers had agreed to participate with a total of 1,750 different drug coverage plan options.
CMS plans to release more detail on premiums and costs for these specific Medicare plans beginning in September 2020, with final information on the savings model.
Beneficiaries will be able to enroll during the Medicare open enrollment period from Oct. 15, 2020, through Dec. 7, 2020. The Part D coverage in these plans would begin Jan. 1, 2021.
Prediabetes Symptoms Causes Treatment Options
Prediabetes is a condition that affects millions of people in the United States and it is defined as having a blood sugar level that is higher than normal, but not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetes. When you have prediabetes, it often leads to type 2 diabetes if it is not treated. In this article, we will discuss what prediabetes is, the symptoms of prediabetes, the causes of prediabetes, and the treatment options for prediabetes among other topics.
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What Factors Impact Treatment Costs For Diabetes
People with diabetes have over two times the healthcare costs of Americans who don’t have this condition. On average, the medical costs related to diabetes can reach over $9,500 per year.
One of the most influential factors driving that difference is the cost of insulin. How much people pay out of pocket for insulin depends on many variables. This includes whether they have insurance, what kind of plan they have, and coverage details such as the plans deductible. How much and what types of medication an individual needs can also impact cost.
In her experience as a physician and pharmacist, Redmond says that most patients need about two vials of insulin per month or one to two packs of insulin pens. Each pen pack is equivalent to about one and a half vials. As of March 2022, the price for a vial of insulin ranges from $50 to over $1,000, and a pack of pens ranges from $45 to over $600.
Prices are too high, Redmond says. Not just for insulin but for most diabetes medications. All of it is still insanely expensive.
A person with diabetes who lives alone could be spending more than half of their annual income on out-of-pocket insulin costs.
What Are The Symptoms Of Diabetes In Cats
Diabetes can be hard to detect at home. As a pet parent, you need to be able to determine if something is wrong with your pet as soon as possible, allowing you to get them to the vet for treatment of diabetes before it causes other problems. These are some of the main symptoms of diabetes in cats.
Frequent urination: You may believe it’s cat urinary problems such as a urinary tract infection if your cat starts urinating more than usual. However, more frequent urination can also be a sign of cat diabetes. You can find out if your cat is urinating more than usual by checking their litter box or watching them go potty. If you see more litter clumping than usual, your cat is likely urinating more frequently.
Dehydration or excessive thirst: Urinating more can lead to dehydration in cats because your cat will be losing fluids faster than they can replace them. If your cat is urinating more frequently, make sure they have enough water to replace lost fluids.
Weight loss: Cats can lose weight despite eating enough if they have diabetes. Cats with diabetes have poor glucose levels at the cellular level, so the body will start burning muscles and fat for energy instead of relying on glucose.
Weakness: If your cat’s body is burning energy through fat and muscles, they’ll begin to get weaker. If you notice signs of weakness or lameness in cats, or they’re not as active as they once were, it could indicate your cat has diabetes.
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Fructosamine To A1c: How Are They Related
Diabetes, also called diabetes mellitus, is a condition that affects millions of people all over the world. It can be difficult to manage, but with the right tools and information, it is possible to live a healthy life with diabetes. One of the most important tools for managing diabetes is understanding fructosamine levels and hemoglobin A1C levels. In this article, we will explain what fructosamine and hemoglobin A1C are, and discuss the relationship between these two measures. We will also provide tips on how to test your fructosamine and hemoglobin A1C levels correctly.
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Cat diabetes requires treatment, which costs money. In some cases, diabetes can be managed with diet and weight loss. However, many cats will need insulin throughout their entire lives once diagnosed with diabetes. While the cost of insulin will depend on where you get it and what brand you purchase, you can keep costs down. This article will discuss what diabetes in cats is and how much you can expect to pay in cat insulin costs.
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What Is The Cost Of Insulin With Insurance
The American Diabetes Association Insulin Access and Affordability Working Group report found that nearly half of Americans have employer-sponsored health insurance. About 20% are insured through Medicaid, and 14% are insured through Medicare. Approximately 7% of Americans purchase health insurance on their own. About 9% of Americans remain uninsured.
Diabetes is considered a pre-existing condition, which is a condition you have prior to applying for health insurance. According to research, about 1.9 million people with diabetes who didn’t have insurance gained coverage after the Affordable Care Act went into effect in 2010.
Still, having insurance doesn’t mean insulin is affordable. Insured patients will often pay a copay or a percentage, rather than the list price, for their insulin. Redmond says that cost could range from $30 to $50.
In cases of high-deductible health plans, patients have to pay the list price for their insulin until their deductible is met. This could mean thousands of dollars out of pocket. Many patients just have a problem paying that much, says Redmond.