I happened upon this article at Medscape. I know the price of insulin is high, however I was unaware that some have to go without it! The following is the last part of the article by Anne L. Peters, MD that you can find here.
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Insulin Is Out of Reach for Some
These have all been really great advances, but we have a long way to go. One of the biggest problems is access to insulin. I work in an underresourced part of Los Angeles. I see people who have only intermittent access to insulin or who have to ration their insulin, and they have A1c levels well above 10%. Yes, insulin keeps them alive, but they develop complications. I see all of the complications of diabetes in people in their 20s and 30s. We really aren’t treating these people well.
And insulin alone is clearly not enough to make a big difference in the treatment of type 1 diabetes. To treat type 1 diabetes, we need the whole bundle. We need to be able to educate people. We need to give them tools. We need to give them support. We need to give them medical care. We need to give them psychological care.
So the biggest barrier now is access, and inherent in that is the cost of insulin. Insulin production is in the hands of three large multinational pharmaceutical companies, and they account for 90% of the insulin market. A lot has been written about the high cost of insulin in the United States. There are many reasons for this, and I don’t have time to go into detail about them. Suffice to say that many of us, and many different advocacy groups are working on this issue so patients can afford their insulin.
There are countries around the world, such as Canada, where you can get insulin at an affordable price. But there are many other countries, both middle and low-income countries, where insulin is unaffordable for the people who live there. It’s very important to think globally. Worldwide, it is estimated that there are 30 million people who need insulin but can’t afford it. Because of the cost and access issues, the World Health Organization just published its new edition of the list of essential medicines that should be available worldwide, and on that list are long-acting insulin analogues. It is hoped that this will result in more quality-assured biosimilar insulins entering the market, so there’s more competition, which enables the price to be reduced, and insulin will be more widely available around the world.
So even though I am incredibly happy that we have insulin — I don’t know where we’d be without it — I also know that we still have many steps to take until insulin is readily accessible around the world and it is used in a way to provide optimal benefit to all people who need it. Thank you.”