Pharmaceutical giant slashes insulin prices after pressure from government and consumers

Bram Sable-Smith:

You know, one of the ways to think about it, I kind of describe it as a "Game of Thrones" that pharmaceutical companies are playing with insurers and these middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers.

And the gist of it is that you will have an insurance company that has millions of patients that they provide insurance for, and through these middlemen, they will go to the pharmaceutical company, and they will say, hey, we want to make your insulin the preferred insulin on our list, but, in return, we want a good deal on it.

So the manufacturers will provide these things called rebates to the middlemen, who will then pass some or all of it on to the insurer. And it creates these incentives for high prices, so that everybody will get their cut along the way.

But what that doesn't take into account is the uninsured and underinsured patients. So when you don't have insurance, or you have a high-deductible plan, something like that, you could be exposed to these high list prices, that really were never meant for patients.

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