Out-of-pocket Costs for Type 2 Diabetes Patients Have Risen with Wider Uptake of Insulin Analogs

Researchers found that in 2000, patients paid median out-of-pocket costs of $19 per prescription, but that his jumped to $36 in 2010. During that time, use of human synthetic insulin dropped off (from 96% to 15%) while use of short- and long-acting analogs such as glargine, detemir, and aspart increased (from 19% to 92%). But that change didn’t appear to be associated with a significant benefit in deterring hypoglycemia which had only a small decline between 2000 and 2010 — 21.1 versus 17.7 events per 1,000 person-years. JAMA 2014; 311(22): 2331-2333