The Riverside Press-Enterprise
House bill caps cost of insulin at $35 a month
WASHINGTON >> A bill to limit the cost of insulin to $35 a month for most Americans who depend on it passed the House on Thursday, raising Democrats’ hopes that the party could take at least one step toward fulfilling its promise of lowering drug costs.
The bill attracted unanimous support from Democrats who voted, as well as from 12 Republicans, making it a rare piece of bipartisan policy legislation.
To become law, the bill will need to attract at least 10 Republican votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster.
Some lawmakers involved in the effort have expressed optimism that such a coalition might be possible, but few Republican senators have publicly endorsed the bill yet. Sen. Susan Collins, R-maine, has been working with Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., on a broader bill related to insulin prices.
The bill would have substantial benefits for many of the nearly 30 million Americans who live with diabetes.
Insulin, a lifesaving drug that is typically taken daily, has grown increasingly expensive in recent years, and many diabetes patients ration their medicines or discontinue them because of the cost. About 1 in 5 Americans who take insulin would save money under the proposal, according to a recent analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
But the insulin bill represents a substantial scaling back of Democratic ambitions to tackle high drug prices for all Americans. A broader prescription drug package, written as part of the $2.2 trillion social spending and climate bill that has stalled in the Senate, would limit price increases on all prescription drugs, improve the generosity of Medicare’s drug coverage, and allow the government to negotiate directly on the price of some drugs used by Medicare patients, while also limiting
Other parts of the broader bill would expand health insurance coverage, extending insulin coverage to diabetes patients who are uninsured. The bill that passed the House on Thursday would not improve the affordability of insulin for people who lack health insurance.
The insulin bill may be the Democrats’ best chance of passing part of their popular prescription drug agenda, as the future of the larger package remains unclear.
“If the effort to address drug prices ends with this plan to cap out-of-pocket costs for insulin, it will amount to crumbs compared to Democrats’ initial ambitions to allow the government to negotiate drug prices,” said Larry Levitt, the executive vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health research group.
On the House floor, several Republicans expressed their opposition, saying it is not the right answer. insulin copayments.