(Washington) The US House of Representatives voted on Thursday a text which, if it then passes the Senate test, will significantly reduce the price of insulin for Americans, who pay much more than elsewhere this vital hormone for millions of diabetics.
Posted yesterday at 6:42 p.m.
The bill proposes to reduce to a maximum of US$35 per month the price paid by the 7.4 million Americans who need it to treat their diabetes. They currently pay about eight times more than in other wealthy countries, according to a 2020 study commissioned by the government.
“It’s a daily problem, whether people will be able to pay their bills. And it is, for us, a step towards the possibility (for the government) of negotiating downwards the cost of drugs beyond insulin, ”explained the boss of the Democrats of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
The text was adopted by 232 votes against 193, some elected Republicans having joined their Democratic colleagues in supporting this effort.
“This treatment has been patent-free for a long time, but its price is still four, five, six, seven, ten times higher than its production cost. We have to do something, ”said a member of the leadership of the Democrats in the House, Steny Hoyer, on Wednesday.
The text provides for a cap on the cost via private health insurance, for a gradual entry into force between 2023 and 2024.
Such a measure was to be part of President Joe Biden’s vast reform plan, “Build Back Better”, abandoned by the executive for lack of a sufficient majority in Congress.
This initiative is therefore seen by the Democrats as a way of showing their ability to carry out reforms, a few months before the mid-term elections scheduled for November, and in particular on the cost of health care in the United States, the most important of the industrialized countries with about US$11,000 spent per year per capita.
The US Senate is holding negotiations on its own text on the matter.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer assured reporters last week that a bipartisan bill had a chance of passing by the end of April.
If some Republican senators have expressed potential support, convincing ten – the bare minimum to be able to adopt this text – to join the process is not yet acquired.
Research has shown that more than a quarter of Americans with type 1 diabetes have had to cut back on their insulin use for financial reasons.
A parliamentary inquiry published in December showed that the pharmaceutical industry had, of the 12 drugs studied, raised prices more than 250 times since 2016, while their executives’ revenues totaled $800 million.