Illinois governor signs law capping insulin costs at $100 per month

Re:Illinois governor signs law capping insulin costs at $100... by nybble41 on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @12:20PM (#22183122)

The actual bill[1] says (more or less) that insurance policies that include prescription drug coverage must cover insulin with a maximum of $100 out-of-pocket expense to the insured for a 30-day supply (page 12 lines 12-18). That $100 limit is indexed to the medical component of the Consumer Price Index (page 13 lines 1-6). It doesn't directly affect the amount suppliers receive, and the state isn't offering to reimburse anyone for the difference. If you don't have insurance which covers prescription drugs then the limit does not apply.

This will most likely lead to higher insurance premiums for policies which cover prescription drugs. Certainly the insurers and suppliers aren't going to be the ones paying for it.

[1] http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?SessionId=108&D...

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Re:Illinois governor signs law capping insulin costs at $100... by rjmunro on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @02:08PM (#22184575)

Do we have any idea how much higher the premiums are likely to be?

Google says there are 1.5-3 million insulin users in the USA - lets call it 1% of the population. Let's say that their drugs cost $300 / month, but they pay $100. The extra $200 will be shared between 100 people's premiums, so $2 extra per month.

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Re:Illinois governor signs law capping insulin costs at $100... by nybble41 on Wednesday January 29, 2020 @03:04PM (#22185171)

The media is citing 1.3 million in Illinois alone with diabetes requiring insulin (out of about 12M population; over 10%) and at least some cases where the cost is over $1000 per month. Assuming it averages out to $300 per month as you said, however, that's still $20/mo. extra per person assuming the difference is distributed uniformly across all insured individuals, and that all individuals in the state are insured.

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