The drugmaker will cap the monthly cost of the medication at $35 per month for those policyholders.
Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly & Co. has announced that it will reduce the price tag on its most commonly prescribed insulin products for private health insurance customers. This discount is by 70 percent, with a cap at $35 per month at certain retail pharmacies.
The price of the Lispro injection will be discounted to $25 per vial, starting on May 1, 2023.
Lilly also announced that it would be reducing the price of its Humlin and Humalog injections by 70 percent starting in the fourth quarter of this year.
The announcement was made as federal pressure has been rapidly rising to cut the cost of insulin. Medicare beneficiaries were already experiencing an insulin price cap at $35 per month due to the Inflation Reduction Act, but this same protection was not extended to people who have private health insurance or who didn’t have other forms of protection from higher drug prices.
President Joe Biden made a call for Congress to put an insulin price cap of $35 per month into effect when he made his State of the Union address. At that time, Lilly announced that it was in support of expanding its price cap to benefit all Americans. Biden placed the spotlight on Lilly’s choice and extended his call for other pharmaceutical companies to make the same decision.
Lilly’s $35 per month cap for private health insurance customers will start immediately at some pharmacies.
The drugmaker established a program to provide insulin to uninsured people with insulin for $35 per month. Individuals without any coverage can download a discount card from the company’s official website. Individuals with private health insurance will be able to enjoy the same price cap.
Seven out of ten Americans are not using the company’s insulin, said David Ricks, CEO at Eli Lilly. He went on to call on the government and employers to do their part in bringing down the cost of injections. It is a medication to treat diabetes, a condition affecting millions of people in the United States.
“So that’s why this issue I think has been such a hot topic,” said Ricks in a recent CNN interview cited by CNBC. “And why insulin has become such a pivotal issue in terms of drug affordability.”