Affordable Insulin Now Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ESPAILLAT. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act, to cap the out-of-pocket price for one month's supply of insulin at $35.

Insulin was discovered nearly 100 years ago and costs less than $10 a vial to manufacture.

Yet there are millions of American families with insurance that are paying hundreds of dollars a vial.

No family in America should be forced to choose between buying insulin for their child and putting food on the table.

It's past time that this Congress says no to big pharma lining their pockets, at the expense of lives of the American people.

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I rise to speak in strong support of H.R. 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act. The bill is simple and gets to the urgent need to limit cost-sharing for insulin under private health insurance and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Specifically, the bill caps cost-sharing under private health insurance for a month's supply of selected insulin products at $35 or 25 percent of a plan's negotiated price (after any price concessions), whichever is less, beginning in 2023.

The bill caps cost-sharing under the Medicare prescription drug benefit for insulin products at:

$35 in 2023 regardless of whether a beneficiary has reached the annual out-of-pocket spending threshold, and

$35 beginning in 2024 for those who have not yet reached this threshold.

The subject of the bill is public knowledge and well known by members of this body. I have worked closely with the healthcare community that serve Houstonians to ensure that programs are receiving the appropriate level of federal support.

One of the most difficult challenges are the hurdles to healthcare created by lack of health insurance such as a lack of access to necessary medications due to the high costs of many prescription drugs.

Diabetes is a life-threatening disease that disproportionately affects communities of color.

Diabetes is associated with serious health problems, including heart disease and stroke, kidney failure, and blindness.

There are 15,000 Medicare beneficiaries in the Eighteenth Congressional District who have been diagnosed with diabetes.

These individuals are my constituents and I know that on average, each of them pays 4.8 times the cost of similar medication in Australia, 3.6 times the cost in the United Kingdom, and 2.6 times the cost in Canada.

Additionally, in the Eighteenth Congressional District, 26.7 percent of residents are uninsured.

For example, an uninsured resident of this congressional district pays 23 times more for this brand of insulin than their counterparts in Australia, 15 times more than they would in the United Kingdom, and 13 times more than they would in Canada.

The consequences of these staggering costs are not benign.

Many patients often speak of having to make heartwrenching decisions about what to buy with the commonly fixed incomes attendant to seniors.

Many medical professionals indicate that the high prices for prescription drugs are a function of a lack of competition, and authorizing Medicare to create a program to negotiate drug prices may be an estimable way to lower the cost of prescription drugs.

All told this reflects a disturbing trend: in our country, the cost of branded drugs tends to go up, whereas in other countries, the costs tend to go down.

Before insulin the prognosis for diabetics was bleak.

Over the past two decades, manufacturers have systematically and dramatically raised the prices of their insulin products by more than tenfold--often in lockstep.

In 2017, diabetes contributed to the death of 277,000 Americans and was the primary death for 85,000 of those individuals

That same year diagnosed diabetes cost the United States an estimated $327 billion--including $237 billion in direct medical costs and $90 billion in productivity losses.

Diabetes drugs, including insulin and oral medications that regulate blood sugar levels, play a critical role in helping people with diabetes manage their condition and reduce the risk of diabetes-related health complications.

Although insulin is the most well-known diabetes medication, diabetes patients are often prescribed other oral drugs to use in place of or alongside insulin.

Many of these non-insulin products used to regulate blood sugar levels are brand drugs that lack generic alternatives.

In recent years, the high prices of diabetes drugs have placed a tremendous strain on diabetes patients as well as the federal government, which provides diabetes medications to more than 43 million Medicare beneficiaries.

Because Medicare lacks the authority to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers, Medicare beneficiaries pay significantly more for their drugs than patients abroad.

Patients who are uninsured or underinsured and must pay for their drugs out of pocket bear an even greater cost burden.

I thank the committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Labor for the work they have done to bring H.R. 6833, the Affordable Insulin Now Act to the floor for a vote.

I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote in support of H.R. 6833.

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