More than 37 million Americans – close to one in ten – have diabetes. That’s a staggering number of individuals who are paying for (or having their insurance pay for) monthly doses of insulin, the drug needed to help regulate a patient’s blood sugar levels. Coincidentally insulin costs have more than tripled in the past twenty years, a result of the messy relationship between insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
In March of last year the U.S. House passed the Affordable Insulin Now Act, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-GA and carried in the House by U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, D-GA, which capped insulin copays at $35 a month for American seniors on Medicare. The legislation was later folded into the Inflation Reduction Act, the massive (and controversial) budget reconciliation bill passed in August.
But according to some Democrats, McBath chief among them, the legislation did not go far enough. She joined with U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-SC, Tuesday to call for an extension of the insulin cap to Americans with private insurance, which would add tens of millions more Americans to the provision. The pair also were not shy to take shots at Senate Republicans, who they accused of blocking a similar measure last August when the Inflation Reduction Act was approved.
Republicans who voted against the provisions pointed out that it would have broken Senate budget rules, allowing for price controls on private companies. And there is bipartisan legislation still on the table that would take similar steps to attempt to lower prescription drug costs.
Lowering the cost for prescription drugs is a very popular (and populist) talking point for politicians on both sides of the aisle. But a pharmaceutical monopoly, (just three companies produce insulin worldwide) combined with a limited number of insurance companies leads to a never-ending saga of political and legal gamesmanship that has seen drug prices rise exponentially.
And according to McBath and Clyburn, a pair of Black Democrats, it’s minorities and rural Americans who get hit the hardest by rising drug costs. African-Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics all have diabetes rates higher than the national average. Likewise rural Americans are 17% more likely to develop diabetes than their urban counterparts.
