Schumer announces legislation to cut cost of insulin

The multidisciplinary pediatric endocrinology center that is a partnership between UB, UBMD Pediatrics and Oishei Children’s Hospital was the place on Monday where Sen. Charles Schumer chose to announce legislation that would cap what he called “the outrageously high price of a monthly dose of insulin.”

Holding up a tiny bottle, Schumer said, “This little bottle costs $600 and the price keeps going up and up and up.” It can add up to an annual total of $13,724 for a Type 1 diabetic, he said.

The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia, would cap the cost at $35 per month for most patients with diabetes, far below the hundreds of dollars that it now costs.

Schumer said there are 1.7 million New Yorkers who have diabetes, and the incidence of both Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes is rapidly increasing around the world.

For patients like Emily Dickey, a freshman at UB who was diagnosed at the age of 5, the clinical struggles with the disease may now be dwarfed by the financial challenges of getting the drug she needs for her very survival.

Dickey pointed out that before the pandemic, people in Western New York could access much cheaper insulin by crossing the border into Canada, where the same amount of insulin that cost hundreds in the U.S. would only cost about $25. And they could buy it without a prescription.

“This should be appalling to Americans,” she said.

Schumer noted that the economics of having diabetes is becoming such a crisis that one in four patients with diabetes now report they are rationing insulin, reducing the amount they take based on how much insulin they can afford, instead of how much they need.

That’s a very real issue for many of the 1,000 children with diabetes who are treated at the UBMD Pediatrics Diabetes Center, said Steven Lipshultz, A. Conger Goodyear Professor and Chair of Pediatrics in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

When patients with diabetes can’t get enough insulin, the risk of serious complications, emergency room visits and hospitalizations goes way up.

Lipshultz noted that with access to care and health equity issues representing some of the thorniest issues that providers can face, the research mission of the Jacobs School faculty is a key element.

“Two-thirds of the children we treat are on Medicaid,” said Lipshultz, who is president of UBMD Pediatrics. “For them, the cost of their medications is the greatest single barrier to their care.”

Schumer plans to bring the bipartisan legislation to a floor vote in March.