First the good news: life-giving insulin will become more affordable for many in the US.
Following years of campaigning by activists, drug manufacturer Eli Lilly and Company announced yesterday it would lower prices on its most commonly prescribed insulin products by 70 percent.
This will bring a huge relief for many in the US, particularly those who are uninsured or underinsured.
Some eight million people in the US use insulin to regulate blood sugar. Without it, they may face serious and even life-threatening complications.
In the absence of adequate insurance, the most commonly prescribed forms of insulin can cost more than $1,000 per month.
Yesterday’s victory comes after years of work by patient-led advocacy organizations and informal aid networks. It’s been a long fight essentially just trying to keep diabetics alive.
Since 1996, when Eli Lilly first began US sales of Humalog – now one of the most frequently prescribed insulins – the company increased the price by about 680 percent (adjusted for inflation). At about $275 per vial in 2018, Lilly’s price for Humalog was 294 percent higher in the US than its average price in 11 other high-income countries.
Human Rights Watch detailed all this in a report last year, documenting how unaffordable insulin forces some diabetics to forgo other basic needs like food and rent. We concluded that the US government’s failure to ensure equal and affordable access to insulin violates the rights of many people with diabetes.
And while Lilly’s announcement is certainly welcome, it does not address the regulatory failures that caused the problem in the first place: the US government policies that have allowed insulin manufacturers to gouge people for a drug they cannot live without.
So, despite the good news, what we said last year remains true today: to meet its human rights obligations, the US should ensure equal and affordable insulin access to everyone who needs it.