A Yale research study proclaims diabetics are paying twice as much for insulin and are using more insulin as compared to 10 years ago despite advancements in new treatments.
The report, published in the Journal of American Medical Association, reveals a patient's out-of-pocket insulin prescription cost jumped from $19 in 2000 to $36 in 2010, the latter representing newer insulin treatments called insulin analogs. The percentage of patients having prescriptions filled spiked from 9.7 percent to 15 percent in the same time period.
The newer treatments provide comparable blood sugar control and while more convenient they cost more, said lead study author Kasia Lipska.
"What we're showing is we kind of universally switched over to the more expensive option without that much convincing data about the benefits of this transition," said Lipska, an instructor of medicine at Yale University School of Medicine. "Given that we are trying to contain our health-care costs, when we see these types of shifts we have to know whether this is worth it."
Researchers say more study is needed on the various options with diabetes medicine. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention more than 29 million residents in the U.S. now are battling diabetes, and a new study this week states 10 percent of the U.S. population has either been diagnosed or is living undiagnosed with type 2 diabetes which accounts for 95 percent of the patient population.
The Yale study reviewed healthcare insurance data from people in the U.S., mostly in the South and Midwest, with Type 2 diabetes who had private insurance. The diabetic population focused on adults over 18 who had two years of continuous coverage between 2000 and 2010.
"We have made an almost universal transition to the use of the more expensive insulin agents, at least among privately insured patients," Lipska said. "Do all these patients find the potential benefits of analogs over human insulin worth the cost? Probably not."
As Tech Times has recently reported the subject of diabetes is a continual research focus given the increasing diagnosis pace and its potential ties to childhood obesity. That report, in May, found that the number of children and young adults with type 1 diabetes has increased by 21. 1 percent from 2001 and 2009 and the increase was observed in black, white, Hispanic and Asian Pacific Islander youths. The number of kids and teens diagnosed with type 2 diabetes has also increased by about 30 percent for the same period. The increase was observed in Hispanic, white and black youths but not in American Indian and Asian Pacific Islander youths.
