US House approves bill setting strict cap on insulin costs

The high cost of insulin to treat diabetes would be drastically reduced under legislation the US House of Representatives passed yesterday, in a rare example of drug price reform gaining traction in Congress.

By a vote of 232-193, with few Republicans supporting the measure, the House approved the bill that would cap patients’ out-of-pocket costs at $35 a month for their insulin.

Currently, monthly supplies of the life-sustaining medicine average around $375 and can go as high as $1,000, causing some people to skip needed doses.

“No one should have to ration their insulin to help reduce costs and risk their health and in some cases actually cost them their lives,” said Democratic Representative Frank Pallone, who chairs a committee that oversees health policy, during House debate.

The legislation would still have to be considered by the Senate, which is crafting a much broader bill.

The Democratic-led effort, if successful, could have far wider ramifications for lowering prescription drug costs – a goal supported by Americans in the run-up to the 8th November congressional elections, according to public opinion polls.

“It is for us a step in the direction of the secretary (of Health and Human Services) being able to negotiate drug prices beyond insulin,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at her weekly news conference yesterday.

Three companies, Sanofi SA, Eli Lilly and Co and Novo Nordisk, have long dominated the US insulin market. The trio own some 90 per cent of the market for insulin, which was invented in the 1920s but continues to rise in cost to consumers.

Republican Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers dismissed the legislation as a “government drug-pricing scheme; part of a socialised medicine approach that would lead to fewer cures” while raising health insurance premiums.

Edits by EP News Bureau