By Trevor Hunnicutt
BALTIMORE (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that other pharmaceutical companies will have to lower their insulin prices in the wake of Eli Lilly’s decision to slash its prices for the popular diabetes treatment.
Eli Lilly said on Wednesday it will cut list prices by 70% for its most commonly prescribed insulin products, Humalog and Humulin, beginning from the fourth quarter of this year.
“Guess what that means?,” Biden told Democrats gathered in Baltimore for an annual retreat. “Every other company making it, someone’s gonna have to lower their price.”
Biden’s signature legislative achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act, has capped insulin prices for Medicare recipients at $35 per month but the law does not extend to patients with private insurance or without insurance from higher prices. He wants Congress to extend the cap beyond Medicare.
“Once you expose these things, it’s awful hard to defend it,” Biden told reporters at the White House before leaving for Baltimore “Once one major carrier or one major operator changes it, it changes everything. So I think we’ve made a lot of progress.”
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(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt and Steve Holland; Writing by Eric Beech; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Diane Craft)