Best way to control costs is by encouraging competition, consumer choice
Mr. Trump’s 2020 Executive Order 13937 would have capped out-of-pocket insulin prices at $35 per month. But the executive order applied only to individuals enrolled in some 1,700 Medicare Part-D prescription drug plans administered through a small group of health services centers. Of the more than 18 million Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes, 8 million, at most, would have been affected.
So, the basic facts are these: If Mr. Biden hadn’t short-circuited the Trump executive order, many older Americans would have seen their insulin costs capped at $35 a month starting in January 2021, some 3½ years ago. Under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, more seniors became eligible for price-controlled insulin in January and July of last year.
Even the HHS summary touting the Inflation Reduction Act insulin provisions conceded that there was no cost crisis: “Nationally,” HHS says, “the average out-of-pocket cost was $58 per insulin fill.”The ubiquitous retailer has sold inexpensive products for people with diabetes, including its house brand insulin, ReliOn , for over 20 years. One formulation still costs less than $25 a vial.