By Amanda Schaffer @ NewYorker.com, Feb. 22, 2019

[....] the price of insulin has unaccountably surged. Between 2012 and 2016, it doubled in the United States, so that today it can cost diabetics as much as a thousand dollars a month. Eli Lilly in particular more than doubled the price of its blockbuster insulin analogue, Humalog, during the tenure of Alex Azar, who was then president of the company and is now President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. Roughly a quarter of people with diabetes take less than the amount of insulin they are prescribed because the drug is so expensive [....]

[.....] the House Committee on Oversight and Reform has launched an investigation of skyrocketing drug prices, and the Senate Finance Committee will convene hearings on drug pricing next Tuesday. One congressional aim is to increase transparency around discounts and rebates, which primarily benefit intermediaries such as pharmacy-benefit managers rather than patients like Skipper, because companies use discounts and rebates to compete with each other rather than competing on the list price of the drug [....]

[.....] “Now I work at a call center. I have Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance through my job, and I can go to a primary-care doctor and an endocrinologist. But, even with insurance, my insulin costs a thousand dollars for a thirty-day supply. I can’t tell you the last time I was able to fill a prescription. I get samples from my endocrinologist. My sister also gets free insulin through a health center, because her income is lower than mine. So we’ve been sharing that [.....]