Arkansas AG sues three major pharmaceutical companies for raising the cost of insulin –

In Arkansas, three major pharmaceutical companies are facing lawsuits over claims they’ve helped drive up the cost of insulin in the state, even as debates over potential insulin price limits heat up nationwide.

Razorback Attorney General Leslie Rutledge of Indianapolis, Indiana announced that she will file a lawsuit against Novo Nordisk, a Danish company, and Eli Lilly, based in Sanofi, France.

The price of insulin has risen famously in recent years, becoming the poster child for the US drug price crisis, the drug that many diabetics need every day to control their condition.

Indeed, managing the price of insulin has become a rare issue, with bipartisan support from both Republicans—like Rutledge—and Democrats—like President Joe Biden and Senator Raphael Warnock.

Thousands of Arkansistas rely on insulin every day to live their best lives. “The manufacturers of these drugs and PBMs have raised the price of insulin and other diabetes-related drugs to fill their pockets,” he said.

“They endangered the lives of thousands of Arkansans and Americans who could not afford to buy this life-saving drug. “Today we are starting the battle to stop this hyperinflation in insulin prices,” he said.

AG’s office reports that more than 400,000 people in Arkansas have been diagnosed with diabetes, 800,000 of whom are prediabetes.

It is also the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, and lower limb amputations in the state.

Such disastrous effects are often due to a person’s inability to control their diabetes, and this is often done by taking insulin regularly to help regulate blood pressure.

Insulin is a lifesaver for diabetics, and many cannot live without it, forcing them to pay for the drug no matter how high.

Two insulins made by Eli Lilly are among the drugs that have seen the biggest price increase in the past decade, according to the Nice Rx report.

As a result, insulin became the fastest growing drug in America.

A report by Nice Rx last month found that the price of Humulin, an insulin made by Eli Lilly, rose 1,070 percent from 2012 to 2022, the highest of any drug in America.

Humalong, also an Eli Lilly insulin product, also saw prices rise 213 percent over the decade, making it the fifth largest share of all drugs included in the analysis.

AG’s office states that insulin production costs less than $2, and synthetic versions cost about $14. Even so, it can now cost up to $700 for a bottle of medicine in the state.

Rutledge points to public companies and associated pharmacy charity managers, who act as intermediaries between customers and drug manufacturers, to create these problems.

None of the three companies named in the lawsuit immediately responded to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.

President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union speech earlier this year, argued for a federal cap on insulin prices of $35 per month, noting the high prices facing Americans.

“One in 10 Americans has diabetes,” Biden said before telling the story of a Virginia teenager he met and whose family was struggling to afford his insulin meds.

Pharmaceutical companies will still do very well [with a price cap]† And while we’re there, Medicare will negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs, as the VA has already done. ”

A federal cap is part of Biden’s “Back to Better” (BBB) ​​agenda, and Warnock also introduced a separate bill proposing a price cap.

France-based Sanofi and Denmark’s Novo Nordisk are also among the companies that Arkansas AG has sued.

The BBB is unlikely to pass the bill, as the bill is currently stuck in the Senate, which means it has little chance of winning the 60 votes needed to get around.

According to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, Americans pay ten times more per bottle of insulin than those living in developed countries.

High prices are responsible for many preventable deaths, and some Americans engage in the dangerous practice of “insulin rationing,” where a person takes smaller doses than they need each day, or even skips several days a day. The bottle lasts longer.

“It’s ridiculous—more than just ridiculous—that Americans with sugar sometimes pay up to $600 for a mere 40-day supply of insulin,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, also a Democrat, said earlier this year.

Some Republicans, such as Louisiana’s John Kennedy, have also expressed support for insulin price limits.

Red and blue states like Maine, New York, Utah, and West Virginia have also adopted insulin price limits in recent months.

However, most of these limits apply only to Americans with health insurance because they reflect the high cost of the customer’s medication to the insurer.

Those without health insurance – about 28 million people – will still have to pay the costs out of their own pockets.