I’ve had type 1 diabetes since 2007. It is one of the most expensive conditions to manage, between insulin, blood glucose test strips ($1 or more apiece!!), regular doctor visits and blood and urine tests. I will have to deal with this for the rest of my life.
The health insurance I’m getting through my work does not cover the fast-acting insulin I take, Novolog, and they want 50% copays for other kinds. I also take Lantus, a long-acting insulin. Both Novolog and Lantus have been on the market for several years already; they are what most type 1 diabetics use these days. I use the pens for both, which I have been using since I was diagnosed. They are the most efficient and convenient method.
A lot of people don’t realize just how expensive it can be, and the prices have risen substantially in the last few years alone. For example, a box of 5 pens of Novolog or Lantus will run well over $400 now. The little bottles are over $200 each now. Out of pocket. Which means if I want to keep using Lantus and switch to Humalog I would have to pay over $200 per box of pens each time I get them refilled with my insurance.
Now, I’m lucky in that I don’t use very much insulin. I use 14-18 units of Lantus a day, and maybe 20-25 units of Novolog a day. But there are a lot of diabetics who use way more than that, who go through one of the bottles or pens in a few days. So the cost adds up rapidly even with insurance; this is a huge problem.
I’ve been doing a lot of comparison shopping, and last night I came across this page that shows the price trends of insulin since January 2013: http://www.goodrx.com/insulins
Just for the sake of it, I’ll highlight the ones I use first:
Novolog
January 27, 2013: $300.26
today: $439 (per box of 5 pens)
Lantus
January 27, 2013: $241.67
today: $381
That’s a jump of $140 in the space of about three years.
The most dramatic increase I see on that page is for Humalog 50/50 (a mixture of fast-acting and long-acting insulins), which has also been on the market for some time:
January 27, 2013: $297.53
today: $880
That’s about a three-times increase. And why? As I said, many of these insulins have been on the market for some time already. While it isn’t as dramatic as the AIDS medication or the infant seizure drug increase it’s still completely ridiculous. But like those, there are no generics of insulin available; the big name brands have the market cornered on about 90% of the product.
I did some more Googling, but all I could find were articles about investing and maximizing stock shares for them.
It is really all about greed, and profiting from people’s medical misfortunes. This is WRONG. WRONG!!!
If we don’t adopt some kind of universal health care in this country I don’t see the problem of high drug prices going away any time soon. Affordable monthly premiums don’t mean anything if you still end up spending 25%+ of your income on actual health care.