Why is insulin so expensive in this country?

We run on sugar, and sugar needs insulin to get into our cells. It’s no surprise that insulin was the first genetically engineered drug, approved by the FDA in 1982. Synthetic insulin keeps millions of people with type 1 diabetes, and a greater number of people with type 2 diabetes, alive.

Basic research keeps turning up surprises about the hormone—its starring roles in the brain, for instance, and its production by some viruses.

Drug companies mostly focus, though, on fiddling with how quickly the body absorbs it. Insulin variants that work either very quickly or very slowly are very important, but why can’t we have insulin that doesn’t need refrigeration? Or “smart insulin” that responds to blood glucose levels, first proposed when Jimmy Carter was president? Although Sanofi supports interesting projects aimed at smart insulin, as do the other market leaders Novo Nordisk and Lilly, there’s little visible progress toward the clinic.

But the biggest question about insulin is: Why is it so expensive in this country?

A 2016 study published in JAMA, for instance, showed that insulin costs doubled between 2002 and 2013. This trend is only accelerating, because there’s no price competition. Irl Hirsch, an endocrinologist at the University of Washington, summarized the story well in an ADA presentation back in 2016 and his points still apply. Year after year,  extremely profitable drug makers and pharmacy benefit managers point their fingers at each other. But as Hirsch noted, “we can point our fingers at everyone.”

New entries such as Basaglar, the first biosimilar insulin approved by the FDA, delayed by predictable patent battles but now available, don’t seem to change the story.

And the story has plenty of human faces. Among them was Shane Patrick Boyle, who died a year ago, unable to raise the money to buy insulin for his type 1 as he saved up for his mother’s funeral. Look at GoFundMe today to see similar personal pleas for help.

As with every other problem in healthcare cost, there are no simple solutions.

One new approach comes from the Open Insulin Project and similar biohacking groups that are making worthy efforts to create generic insulins. But those are  only early steps in the process, and clinical trials are too expensive to crowdfund.

You can argue that in a more rational world, the federal government would step in. Why not launch a 28^th National Institute of Health that develops selected high-value high-need generics and biosimilars, brings them through clinical testing and into the clinics? Or simply control the costs of crucial drugs, lowering prices in the years after generics or biosimilars enter the market, as Australia apparently is now doing? OK, not likely. But what actually would help?