UTAH, Jan. 10, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — The Utah Attorney General’s Office and the Utah Department of Commerce’s Division of Consumer Protection have filed a lawsuit against insulin manufacturers alleging a pricing scheme “that has harmed hundreds of thousands of Utah diabetics and their families,” a news release says.
The manufacturers being sued are Eli Lilly, Novo, Nordisk, and Sanofi, as well as pharmacy benefits managers (PBM) CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx, the joint agency statement says.
“Access to affordable insulin is, literally, a life-or-death issue,” Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said in the released statement. “But, insulin makers and PBMs value billions in profits over the lives and well-being of Utahns. The markups and margins on insulin are unconscionable.
“Unrestrained greed cannot be allowed to direct our healthcare outcomes. This is one of the most egregious cases of avarice and inhumanity I have ever seen. It not only violates the law, but is morally repugnant, too.”
Though the cost of producing diabetes drugs has decreased over time, the lawsuit alleges manufacturers and PBMs worked together to inflate the reported price of these medications up to 1,000% over the last decade, the statement says.
“PBMs used their significant leverage in the pharmaceutical pricing chain to raise profits instead of lowering prices for consumers,” the statement says. “Manufacturer defendants allegedly raised the reported prices of diabetes medication only to deceptively refund a significant portion back to PBMs through rebates, discounts, credits, and administration fees.”
This alleged scheme created an environment where patients were forced to pay artificially high prices for life-saving medications while PBMs and manufacturers reaped record profits, the joint news release says, adding that “Patients with diabetes have collectively been overcharged millions of dollars a year for medication that is expensive only because the defendants know they can extract money from patients who would die without it.”
Margaret Woolley Busse, executive director of the Utah Department of Commerce, says the alleged pricing scheme “is not only appalling, it’s also unlawful. We’ll do everything in our power to hold these companies accountable for their unconscionable actions and for the damage they have caused to Utahns who rely on insulin for survival.”
Currently, 200,000 Utahns, approximately 8 percent of the adult population, suffer from diabetes, and an additional 700,000 have pre-diabetes. The complaint alleges the total estimated cost after diabetes diagnosis to be $1.7 billion per year just in Utah; one in every four dollars in healthcare is spent caring for diabetes patients.
If you’ve been affected by insulin costs, the Division of Consumer Protection is inviting you to share your experience at dcp.utah.gov/insulin . Your input will be shared with the Division and might be used in this legal action.
The full complaint appears below:
