Diabetes affects millions of Americans, with 1.4 million new cases diagnosed each year. This chronic condition is one of the leading causes of death in the United States and accounts for more than $320 billion in annual health care costs.
In addition, insulin has become more expensive, with the cost of some formulations increasing by almost 600 percent in recent years. Rising costs create a financial burden and can even motivate patients to ration insulin, which can have negative health effects. To address this, Colorado passed a law in 2019 capping monthly out-of-pocket costs at $100 for state-regulated health insurance plans.
Colorado was the first state to pass such a law, and other states and the U.S. federal government have since instituted insulin price caps.
Until now, however, little research has been conducted on this law's effects. In a new article in Health Affairs , Dr. Benjamin Ukert, assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, and colleagues analyzed data on insulin prescriptions from Colorado's All Payer Claims Database to determine the effects of the state's insulin cost-capping law.
Ukert and colleagues used data on pharmacy claims for insulin prescriptions from 40 commercial health insurers, Medicare, Medicare Advantage and the state's Medicaid program, Health First Colorado, from January 2018 to December 2021. This gave the researchers two-year periods from before and after Color.