More Americans with diabetes will get a break on their insulin costs in 2024.
Sanofi is joining the nation’s two other major insulin manufacturers in offering either price caps or savings programs that lower the cost of the drugs to $35 for many patients. The three drugmakers are also drastically lowering the list prices for their products.
The moves were announced in the spring, but some didn’t take effect until January 1.
Drugmakers have come under fire for years for steeply raising the price of insulin, which is relatively inexpensive to produce. The inflation-adjusted cost of the medication has increased 24% between 2017 and 2022, and spending on insulin has tripled in the past decade to $22.3 billion in 2022, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Your comment reminds me of the Charlie Brown commercial where they all keep saying everything should be five cents…
I’m reasonably certain we could afford medications no problem if they were priced at say 150% of overhead or so. Profits could be had without any taxes needing levied to cover it.
Offering taxes as an answer is pretty much begging the med companies to gouge harder, because subsidies have pretty much become a blank check.
We need single payer so fucking bad… The guy that holds the patent wants his cut, the guy that makes the pill wants his cut, the guy that offers the insurance wants his cut, the pharmacy wants it’s cut, the docs want their cut… Shit isn’t cheaper in foreign countries because the sellers are discounting it, it’s cheaper because there’s a third as much shenanigans between the supplier and the purchaser.
I pay cash for one of my meds. It’s $27 if I just pay for it. It’s almost $150 if I go through insurance, and my copay for it is more than the bottle costs if I pay cash… That’s clearly indicative of a broken system… Most of the others it’s slightly cheaper for me to pay the copay, but my insurer is getting soaked on that deal, and that money comes out of our pockets somehow, somewhere (no, I don’t pay cash for those… I’m paying for that fucking insurance… Ya know?)