The nearly 600,000 Kentuckians suffering from diabetes must be able to afford their daily supply of insulin to stay alive.
Beshear
With the price of insulin tripling over the past nearly 20 years, many of us have heard the alarming stories about diabetics rationing insulin, using inferior insulin or even bypassing treatment. These practices are dangerous. They can even be deadly.
At a recent public meeting in Frankfort, one Kentucky woman said she could not afford insulin for years. As a result, she developed other diabetes-related chronic diseases, one causing the loss of her leg below the knee.
She called pricing insulin at such sky-high amounts “nothing short of premeditated murder,” and wondered if she would “make it another five years.”
Her story is heartbreaking and many like her suffer through similar circumstances, all while three pharmaceutical companies that control 96 percent of the world’s insulin market – Eli Lilly, Sanofi-Aventis and Novo Nordisk – rake in billions.
It is simply wrong that these companies pay between $2.28 and $6.34 to manufacture a single vial of insulin while the average wholesale price is around $300 for that same vial.
In May, I had had enough of the deception. I filed a lawsuit to hold these companies accountable for the unconscionable overpricing of insulin products that led to unwarranted and drastic prices increases.
From December 2010 to January 2019, Sanofi’s insulin for injection increased in price 311 percent, with another insulin for injection drug increasing 285 percent in the same period.
Eli Lilly’s drug increased from $235 per package in November 2011 to $530 in May 2017.
A drug sold by Novo Nordisk more than doubled in price, from $255 per package in July 2012 to $558 in July 2018, without any significant change to the product.
While these companies worked to increase bottom lines and maintain market shares, Kentucky families hit hardest by this price gouging could be paying more than $1,000 a month for insulin just to stay alive.
The ruthlessness of these corporations is clear when you consider that in 1922, the inventors of insulin sold their patent for just $1 so that this critical drug would be available and affordable for diabetics everywhere.
Diabetics should not have to risk life and limb to treat a disease with what could and should be inexpensive medication.
Diabetes is a public health epidemic in Kentucky and many here are in need.
We rank the seventh highest in the U.S. for diabetes prevalence. It is estimated that an additional 108,000 Kentuckians have the disease and do not know it. Doctors will newly diagnose about 135,000 of our friends and family members next year.
An astonishing 1.1 million Kentuckians have prediabetes. Additionally, medical expenses related to this disease total $3.6 billion for Kentuckians annually.
Kentuckians must come before pharmaceutical company profits and you deserve nothing less.
Andy Beshear is Kentucky’s Attorney General
