WASHINGTON — The heads of the influential Senate Finance Committee on Friday launched an investigation into the high price of insulin, demanding answers from the three manufacturers that control most of the global market for the drug: Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk.
The bipartisan investigation is the latest sign of Washington’s growing interest in the rising price of prescription drugs and highlights in particular the increasingly central role the Finance Committee is playing in that debate under its new chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). The same panel will hear from seven drug industry CEOs — including Sanofi’s CEO Olivier Brandicourt — about the rising cost of drugs Tuesday.
“We are concerned that the substantial increases in the price of insulin over the past several years will continue their upward drive and pose increasingly severe hardships not only on patients that require access to the drug in order to stay alive but also on the taxpayer,” Grassley and ranking member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote in three letters sent to the insulin makers.
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If that’s their excuse let’s take it away. In other words, let’s remove the middlemen. Let’s make a plan to to do this; do you concur? I’ll be glad to help with the effort.
Sincerely,
MK