The cost of insulin in the United States has risen considerably in recent years, with some estimates finding that Americans have paid around 10 times more for the drug than people in other developed countries.
But recent changes by the government and drug manufacturers have started to drive insulin prices down, something President Joe Biden often mentions at campaign events.
Biden told the crowd at a March 19 campaign reception in Reno, Nevada, that he’s fought for years to allow Medicare to negotiate with drug companies.
"How many of you know someone who needs insulin?" Biden asked. "OK, well, guess what? It was costing 400 bucks a month on average. It now costs $35 a month."
We’ve heard Biden make this point several times on the campaign trail — in other instances, he has said beneficiaries were paying "as much as" $400 a month — so we wanted to look into it.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed in 2022, caps out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 a month for Medicare enrollees. The cap took effect in 2023. In response, three drug manufacturers said they planned to reduce the price of insulin to $35 through price caps or savings programs.
The legislation also helped patients by clarifying how much they would have to pay for insulin and other drugs.
But Biden overstated the average monthly cost that Medicare beneficiaries were paying before the law.
One government estimate for out-of-pocket insulin costs found that people with diabetes enrolled in Medicare or private insurance paid an average of $452 a year — not a month, as Biden said. That’s according to a December 2022 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services using 2019 data. Uninsured users, however, paid more than twice as much on average for the drug, or about $996 annually.
About half of U.S. insulin users are on MedicareMore than 37 million Americans have diabetes, and more than 7 million of them need insulin to control their blood sugar levels and prevent dangerous complications. Of the Americans who take the drug, about 52% are on Medicare.
It’s unlikely that many Medicare enrollees were paying the $400 out-of-pocket monthly average Biden referred to, though it could be on target for some people, especially if they’re uninsured, drug pricing experts told us.
"It would be more accurate to say that it could cost people on Medicare over $400 for a month of insulin, but the average cost would have been quite a bit lower than $400 on Medicare," said Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.