Insulin Treatment Cost for Diabetes Increased Sharply for Last Decade, Study Finds

The insulin cost has risen steeply for the last decade. Hormone insulin one of the vital medicine that is used to treat diabetes.

From 2002 to 2013 the price of hormone insulin has increased almost 200 per cent according to the new study. (from $231 to $736 a year per patient)

In 2012, 29.1 million Americans, or 9.3% of the population, had diabetes. Roughly 1.25 million American children and adults have type 1 diabetes. Annually 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes as well.

"The cost of insulin has risen rapidly over the last few years," said study senior author Philip Clarke, a professor of health economics at the University of Melbourne in Australia. Clarke noted there should be way to see whether this cost increase is justifiable in terms of better clinical result.

The researchers looked into data from almost 28,000 diabetes discovered in the Medical Expenditure Panel, a database on health care costs maintained by the US Department of Health and Human Services.

A biggest reason for increasing cost is analog insulin, a man-made insulin made in the 1990s.

Analog insulin is faster-acting than human insulin, is thought to be easier to use and may lead to less low blood sugar reactions.

But analog insulin is also more dearer. Analog insulin now accounts for approximately 90 percent of the insulin market. For Type 2 diabetes, human insulin is safe and effective, in addition to being more cheap.

Currently, around 6 million people in the U.S. use insulin to control their diabetes.

Diabetes was the seventh leading reason of death in the United States in 2010 based on the 69,071 death certificates in which diabetes was listed as the underlying cause of death. In 2010, diabetes was noted as a cause of death in a total of 234,051 certificates.

The cost of insulin does not seem to decrease, and the reasons may be because of the regulations of bringing similar products to the market, and also the cost involved.