Eli Lilly & Co.’s announcement that it is slashing prices for its major insulin products could make life easier for some diabetes patients while easing pressure on Big Pharma.
It also casts light on the profiteering methods of the drug industry’s price mediators — the pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs — at a time when Congress has shifted its focus to them.
Insulin has come to embody the perversity of the U.S. health care system as list prices for the century-old drug, which 8.4 million Americans depend on for survival, quintupled over two decades to more than $300 for a single vial. Just because Lilly — which sells about a third of the insulin in the United States — lowers its price doesn’t mean all patients will pay less, even in the long run.
