FRIDAY, Oct. 9, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Manufacturer prices of insulin are considerably higher in the United States than in other countries, according to a report published by the RAND Corporation.
Andrew W. Mulcahy, Ph.D., from RAND Health Care Communications in Santa Monica, California, and colleagues compared prices of insulins in the United States relative to prices in 32 other countries.
The researchers found that for all insulins combined and for different types of insulin, manufacturer prices in the United States were considerably higher than those in other countries. For a market basket of insulins sold in the United States, manufacturer prices ranged from 3.8 times those in Chile to 27.7 times those in Turkey. Manufacturer prices in the United States were 8.1 times higher than those in all non-U.S. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries combined. The ratio of U.S. prices to prices in other countries varied based on the comparison country and insulin category, but U.S. prices were always higher and often five to 10 times higher than those in other countries. For analog versus human insulins, U.S. prices were higher in nearly all comparison countries.
“This analysis provides the best available evidence about how much more expensive insulin is in the U.S. than in other nations around the world,” Mulcahy said in a statement. “Prices in the U.S. are always much higher than other nations, even if you assume steep discounts to manufacturer prices in the United States.”