Social Bad Day For Big Pharma: California To Make Its Own Insulin and Generic Prescription Drugs

[Revolver]

Op/Ed: State production will bring down high costs of insulin
By Dr. Mark Ghaly | August 14, 2022
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Many Californians today experience the pain of skyrocketing drug prices while drug companies post record profits, and patients struggle to afford lifesaving medications as their health insurance premiums increase year after year.

The CalRx initiative, a groundbreaking solution to improve affordability, empowers the State of California to develop generic drugs and sell them at low cost. Through state-led manufacturing, CalRx will be the backstop for markets that fail to deliver affordable medications for Californians by promoting increased generic manufacturing to address such market failures as low competition, drug shortages and fragile supply chains.

CalRx’s first drug priority is insulin. As Gov. Gavin Newsom stated in January’s California Blueprint budget announcement, insulin has long epitomized the worst failures of the pharmaceutical industry. Excessively high barriers for new market entrants, hyperconsolidation and industry abuses of the legal/regulatory system have resulted in exorbitant price increases for insulin over the last two decades. Insulin inaccessibility affects the 10.7% of Californians with diabetes — roughly 200,000 of whom are uninsured or underinsured — and disproportionately harms low-income, Black and Latino Californians. For uninsured consumers and insured consumers with high deductibles, a five-pen pack of insulin (roughly a month’s supply) can cost well over $500, crowding out household budgets for other necessities, such as housing and food.

The physical, emotional and financial tolls of such excessive insulin prices can be devastating; the physiologic impact of the emotional stress alone can worsen one’s diabetes.

Inaccessibility often leads to the practice of rationing or skipping insulin doses. These choices, never recommended by clinicians, lead to poorly regulated blood sugars and contribute to severe disease, such as diabetic ketoacidosis, renal failure and neuropathies that lead to limb loss. The excessive cost of insulin drives racial, ethnic and economic disparities deeper and feeds into a devastating cycle of skipped insulin doses, poor glucose control, worse diabetes-related disability, the inability to work and participate in normal activities, loss of income and life chances, and a worsened ability to afford other life expenses.

A healthy California for all calls us to do what we can to put good diabetes control within financial reach of all Californians. That’s why CalRX is a key program for the Newsom administration.

Through the CalRx Biosimilar Insulin Initiative, California can remedy the market failure for affordable insulin by investing $50 million to develop the most popular short- and long-acting types of insulin. An additional $50 million will be used to support the construction of an insulin manufacturing facility in California. This facility will have the added benefit of enhancing economic development through high-paying jobs and a strengthened supply chain for insulin. With the Legislature and administration’s support, these products could reach pharmacies, retailers and other channels, such as mail-order pharmacies, in the next two to three years.

Independent analyses by experts at Johns Hopkins have found that savings for payers — such as employers and health care plans — and patients would be substantial. Uninsured and underinsured people living with diabetes could reduce their annual out-of-pocket costs by up to 90%. On the payer side, commercial insurers could reduce insulin expenditures by up to 66% — slowing the trend of annual health premium increases that fall on the shoulders of workers and employers and passing those savings on to employers and enrollees through lower premiums and/or lower cost-sharing for drugs.

Most importantly, the entry of CalRx insulin products would inject steep price competition and help shift the industry from obscure, rebate-based pricing toward low, transparent pricing. As a first-of-its-kind project utilizing state capital to correct a severe market failure burdening millions of Californians, the proposal includes a number of tools to mitigate risk, including strong contracting requirements that link payment to a contractor fulfilling concrete milestones.

There is a human cost to inaction. The status quo has contributed to countless unnecessary health complications and deaths. The Newsom administration understands exactly what the end goal should be: low-cost insulin available and affordable for every Californian who needs it. In order to get there, we need the state to correct market failures so that cost is never a barrier to lifesaving medications. With support from stakeholders — from the public to the Legislature — we can deliver such products and improve health outcomes for millions of Californians with diabetes.


Dr. Mark Ghaly is the secretary of the California Health & Human Services Agency.

https://www.marinij.com/2022/08/14/...uction-will-bring-down-high-costs-of-insulin/

Goatsome 2024

 

[boingyman]

A couple of things I hope occurs.
-Create a rapid acting to mimic Humalog/Novolog/etc
-Create a long acting to mimic Lantus/Levemir/etc
-Create a ultra rapid acting to mimic Lyumjev/Fiasp/etc
-Patients tolerate and response well to these new insulin

Seperate, but related.
-Lower criteria and make it easier and more affordable to obtain a continuous glucose monitor or flash glucose monitor
-Make it more affordable to obtain an insulin pump

 

[Arkain2K]

The insulin cartel is shaking in their boots and finally cutting their prices by 75% now that they realize CA is serious about offering $30 insulin.

Dumb fucks don't realize that if they didn't insist on being so damn greedy and pump their brand-name drugs prices to well over 10x their cost, generic alternatives would remain a very small niche in the market rather than eventually eating their lunch.
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California enters a contract to make its own affordable insulin
By Emma Bowman

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced a new contract with nonprofit drugmaker Civica Rx, a move that brings the state one step closer to creating its own line of insulin to bring down the cost of the drug.

Once the medicines are approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Newsom said at a press conference on Saturday, Civica — under the 10-year agreement with the state worth $50 million — will start making the new CalRx insulins later this year.

The contract covers three forms of insulin — glargine, lispro and aspart. Civica expects them to be interchangeable with popular brand-name insulins: Sanofi's Lantus, Eli Lilly's Humalog and Novo Nordisk's Novolog, respectively.

The state-label insulins will cost no more than $30 per 10 milliliter vial, and no more than $55 for a box of five pre-filled pen cartridges — for both insured and uninsured patients. The medicines will be available nationwide, the governor's office said.

"This is a big deal, folks," the governor said. "This is not happening anywhere else in the United States."

A 10 milliliter vial of insulin can cost as much as $300, Newsom said. Under the new contract, patients who pay out of pocket for insulin could save up to $4,000 per year. The federal government this year put a $35 monthly cap on out-of-pocket costs on insulin for certain Medicare enrollees, including senior citizens.

Advocates have pushed for years to make insulin more affordable. According to a report published last year in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, 1 in 6 Americans with diabetes who use insulin said the cost of the drug forces them to ration their supply.

"This is an extraordinary move in the pharmaceutical industry, not just for insulin but potentially for all kinds of drugs," Robin Feldman, a professor at the University of California San Francisco's College of the Law, told Kaiser Health News. "It's a very difficult industry to disrupt, but California is poised to do just that."

The news comes after a handful of drugmakers that dominate the insulin market recently said they would cut the list prices of their insulin. (List prices, set by the drugmaker, are often what uninsured patients — or those with high deductibles — must pay for the drug out-of-pocket.)

After rival Eli Lilly announced a plan to slash the prices of some of its insulin by 70%, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi followed suit this past week, saying they would lower some list prices for some of their insulin products by as much 75% next year. Together, the three companies control some 90% of the U.S. insulin supply.

Newsom said the state's effort addresses the underlying issue of unaffordable insulin without making taxpayers subsidize drugmakers' gouged prices.

"What this does," he said of California's plan, "is a game changer. This fundamentally lowers the cost. Period. Full stop."

Insulin is a critical drug for people with Type 1 diabetes, whose body doesn't produce enough insulin. People with Type 1 need insulin daily in order to survive.

The insulin contract is part of California's broader CalRx initiative to produce generic drugs under the state's own label. Newsom says the state is pushing to manufacture generic naloxone next.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/19/1164572757/california-contract-cheap-insulin-calrx

 

[DoctorNick]

I'm really hopeful this spreads across the country. You would puke if I told you the mark up of even common drugs we dispense thousands of daily.

Sadly, we could also avoid dispensing a solid chunk of said drugs if people lived somewhat healthy lifestyles. Still, insulin is long over due and I'm hoping this spreads like wildfire to bring down costs across the board.