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New Delhi: Senior citizens and other Medicare enrollees can now pay $35 a month for each insulin prescription. Insulin was discovered more than a century ago and is relatively inexpensive to manufacture but its price has soared in recent years.
According to a report in CNN, the new provision is the first cost-sharing limit for insulin ever enacted at a federal level, said Elise Tollefson, vice president for federal affairs at the American Diabetes Association. Some 22 states and the District of Columbia have placed caps ranging from $25 to $100 on insulin, supplies or devices, though they only pertain to insurance plans regulated by the state.
The $35 cap on insulin is expected to translate into big savings for some senior citizens.
After decades of failed attempts, Democrats passed legislation that aims to rein in the soaring costs of drugs for some in the United States in August last year.
In 2024, Medicareis likely to get rid of a 5% coinsurance required of patients who have met the catastrophic threshold, which is currently set at $7,050 for out-of-pocket costs for drugs. Nearly 3 million Medicare patients met that threshold at some point from 2015 to 2019, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The following year, out-of-pocket drug costs will be capped at $2,000 for Medicare Part D, which typically covers at-home prescription medications.
Starting this year, drug companies will also have to pay a rebate to Medicare if they raise the cost of a drug higher than the rate of inflation. The industry regularly raises the price of drugs above inflation yearly.
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