(Images courtesy of TVW)
The President talked about the cost of insulin for seniors in his State of the Union Address Tuesday evening. Now, state lawmakers are discussing a plan to lower insulin costs for young people.
The State Health Care Authority is already allowed to buy the opioid overdose reversal drug, Narcan, in bulk to save money, so House Bill 1725 would allow it to buy insulin and enter into agreements to distribute it to people under 21 to make it less expensive.
An emotional East Wenatchee City Councilman, Matthew Hepner, talked about going to Harborview with his daughter as she faced a ketoacidosis emergency. “When your 10 year old girl is strapped to a gurney, with her little arms full of IVs, scared out of her mind, being medevacked to Children’s (Hospital),” Hepner says, “and she looks you straight in the eye and says, ‘Daddy, am I going to die?,’ that doesn’t go away.” Hepner says the monthly expense of the life-sustaining drug he and many parents need to provide for their children doesn’t go away either.
Kate White Tudor, on behalf of the Washington Association for Community Health, testified before the State House Health Care and Wellness Committee as “other”, meaning neither for nor against the bill, telling the committee the underlying policy of the bill is complex and that they are working to evaluate potential impacts to community health centers and the support they provide to families dealing with diabetes. White Tudor suggested a drastic change to the bill, “which is to make insulin free and available to children under 21 and to figure out what the potential cost to the state might be for making that available.”
No one testified in opposition to the bill.
A Yale study finds some families pay as much as 40% of the income they have left after paying for housing and food just to cover the cost of insulin. Insulin can cost anywhere from $600 dollars per year with insurance to more than $12,000 a year without.
You can watch the hearing on TVW here. The committee begins to hear HB 1725 at about the 53:30 mark.
