Firstly, for anyone completely out of insulin, please know novonordisk offers a patient assistant program and will cover your insulin free of cost. I used this during college. If you can't even afford a doctor, there should be free health care clinics willing to sign those forms required. I used my college's clinic once to do so as well. The down side is signing away your personal health records.
As a type 1 diabetic myself, Walmart's offerings on R or Regular insulin saved me a few times. Once when I was simply out of insulin and did not have insurance. Then when I was caught in another city for work and ran out due to needing to extend my stay. I am slightly disappointed to see that one, the price is not the same as their human insulin which is around 25 dollars per vial I believe. Two, it will require a prescription. The times I bought their cheapest insulin, this was not required. However, I hope this is the right direction.
I wish more people knew about Walmart's $25/vial regular insulin. Like you said, it's available without a prescription at any Walmart (except in Indiana). Dosing needs to be adjusted relative to insulin analogs, but it's a viable option for anyone in a money pinch who hasn't yet gone through the process of signing up for patient assistance programs for their analog.
Human insulin is the insulin humans naturally produce. Analogs provide the same biologic function as insulin but are engineered to have different properties. Like they can be faster acting or stay in the blood longer. This makes it easier for diabetics to manage their blood sugar.
The GP was bemoaning that Walmart is selling the analogs for $70+ instead of the $25 they sell human insulin for.
This really is one of those great shames of the US. Insulin is 10x what it should cost.
Out of pocket, Fiasp costs 7.50 euro per 3ml, Novorapid costs 6.50, Novomix 30 is 7 euro, Triseba 12 euro, even the ridiculously pricy Xultophy is only 30 euro. The idea that "We halved the price" when the price is literally ten times too high, and not presenting it as "a start, we intend to bring the price down far more over the next few years" but as "and then we stopped, we're undercutting and that's all we're interested in" is... insane?
Great to see more competition in the insulin analogs space.
Walmart is also famous for selling regular insulin for $25/vial for many years now. Regular insulin isn't always as easy to dose as the modern insulin analogs, but it's a viable option for most people who are cost-constrained who don't otherwise have access to insurance.
Please don't do that. The older R/N/L insulins are clearly not as good as the newer insulins, that much is true. But they are sufficient to live a relatively healthy life as a diabetic. You need to be more careful and strict with your diet and activity, but there's nothing inherent in them that causes blindness or death.
This is great, but (obviously) not purely benevolent.
A vial of analog insulin costs something like $6-7 to produce, probably less at Walmart scale. The distribution costs probably make the net cost somewhere still in the $7-10 range.
That’s a $60-65 or ~90% margin per Vial.
5-10 million or so insulin users in the US, let’s assume Walmart captures 3 million, at 3 vials per month.
$180 * 12 * 3mil ~~ 6.5 Billion.
Current market cap 400B
Lots of assumptions, but Walmart may have just added 2% of market cap per annum by insulin sales?
Of course it's not purely benevolent. Walmart is a business and this is a business move.
> A vial of analog insulin costs something like $6-7 to produce, probably less at Walmart scale. The distribution costs probably make the net cost somewhere still in the $7-10 range.
Don't forget the R&D costs of getting a generic drug approved and setting up the manufacturing. It may cost <$10 to produce at scale, but getting there isn't free.
Hopefully Walmart's pricing trends downward toward the $25/vial price of regular insulin.
Actually, I hope this move spurs more chain pharmacies to start developing their own analogs, furthering competition in the space. Race to the bottom would be great.
Curious how often the “race to the bottom” versus the “planned price floor” applies to healthcare.
Sure, OTC stuff may differ given the different markets, but I’m highly skeptical of this spurring any sort of race to the bottom that doesn’t also come with large asterisks around quality, qualification to purchase, etc.
>A vial of analog insulin costs something like $6-7 to produce, probably less at Walmart scale
Where are you getting the $6-7 figure from? Artisan insulin makers? Feels like every insulin maker out there operates at walmart's scale, if not bigger. If that's where we're getting the $6-7 figure from, then it's not reasonable to expect it to drop any further.
$5.32-8.87 cost of production depending on the insulin analog.
As noted above, I did not account for R&D and manufacturing capacity.
Regardless, I tried to estimate conservatively at a $12-13 per vial overall cost. My napkin math is certainly wrong.
The point is that Walmart still stands to generate a multi-billion dollar per year profit on the sale of this insulin. (Unless my market capture estimate is wrong by an order of 6+, which it could be)
To be clear, I’m not opposed (in fact grateful) that Walmart is competing in the insulin market. However, I still find it unfortunate that we in the United States pay more for Insulin than any other country in the world, even with this competition.
I really would love it if people contemplated for a moment before posting horrible stuff acting like everyone with type 2 diabetes deserves it, or only has it because they buy food at Walmart. There are all sorts of factors that can contribute to diabetes and some people struggle with it for life. Do a little better.
No one deserves to have a disease, and no one should say that. I'm not from US, but whenever I went there in the past I was amazed at the size of the portions, the size of the cars, and the size of the people.
I would like to live in a world where we can both be sensitive about certain topics, but also be able start hard discussions - for example "don't live an unhealthy lifestyle, exercise, eat better, or you're going to be the only one to blame if you get sick from X, Y, Z".
There's a far cry between the position you advocate (which I still consider victim-blaming, but, okay) and the callousness exhibited by others in this thread.
The inventors of insulin gave away the patents to specifically not profit off of a life saving drug. This is progress. However, I feel we have regressed as a society on preserving equitable access to life saving drugs.
> The inventors of insulin gave away the patents to specifically not profit off of a life saving drug
This is an insulin analog, which is a more modern patented drug.
Regular insulin is available for $25/vial at Walmart already. Could be cheaper, yes, but at that price it's already approaching their costs of production, distribution, and sales.
I hope the price of this insulin analog trends downward toward the $25 price of regular insulin.
Genuine question (I'm not diabetic): are the analogs actually any better than regular insulin, or were these analogs only created because manufacturers didn't like the margins on regular insulin, allowing them to hold up their hands and justify the price with "R&D"?
"Fantastic for customers" is an overstatement IMO. A well-informed customer can stretch their budget without too many compromises by selectively shopping there. But that's exhausting, it's much easier to just run down your list or buy everything you can remember needing while you're there. This usually leads to major compromises in value, function, and the quality of life for everyone involved in the supply chain. Not to mention the chilling effect on the rest of the retail environment in every market they've decided to i̶n̶v̶a̶d̶e̶ enter.
Not meaning to cast any shade at this insulin product; it looks like a substantial improvement over what the US "market" for insulin was offering before.
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As a type 1 diabetic myself, Walmart's offerings on R or Regular insulin saved me a few times. Once when I was simply out of insulin and did not have insurance. Then when I was caught in another city for work and ran out due to needing to extend my stay. I am slightly disappointed to see that one, the price is not the same as their human insulin which is around 25 dollars per vial I believe. Two, it will require a prescription. The times I bought their cheapest insulin, this was not required. However, I hope this is the right direction.
I wish more people knew about Walmart's $25/vial regular insulin. Like you said, it's available without a prescription at any Walmart (except in Indiana). Dosing needs to be adjusted relative to insulin analogs, but it's a viable option for anyone in a money pinch who hasn't yet gone through the process of signing up for patient assistance programs for their analog.
Deleted Comment
Just... die?
The GP was bemoaning that Walmart is selling the analogs for $70+ instead of the $25 they sell human insulin for.
Out of pocket, Fiasp costs 7.50 euro per 3ml, Novorapid costs 6.50, Novomix 30 is 7 euro, Triseba 12 euro, even the ridiculously pricy Xultophy is only 30 euro. The idea that "We halved the price" when the price is literally ten times too high, and not presenting it as "a start, we intend to bring the price down far more over the next few years" but as "and then we stopped, we're undercutting and that's all we're interested in" is... insane?
Walmart is also famous for selling regular insulin for $25/vial for many years now. Regular insulin isn't always as easy to dose as the modern insulin analogs, but it's a viable option for most people who are cost-constrained who don't otherwise have access to insurance.
A vial of analog insulin costs something like $6-7 to produce, probably less at Walmart scale. The distribution costs probably make the net cost somewhere still in the $7-10 range.
That’s a $60-65 or ~90% margin per Vial.
5-10 million or so insulin users in the US, let’s assume Walmart captures 3 million, at 3 vials per month.
$180 * 12 * 3mil ~~ 6.5 Billion.
Current market cap 400B
Lots of assumptions, but Walmart may have just added 2% of market cap per annum by insulin sales?
> A vial of analog insulin costs something like $6-7 to produce, probably less at Walmart scale. The distribution costs probably make the net cost somewhere still in the $7-10 range.
Don't forget the R&D costs of getting a generic drug approved and setting up the manufacturing. It may cost <$10 to produce at scale, but getting there isn't free.
Hopefully Walmart's pricing trends downward toward the $25/vial price of regular insulin.
Actually, I hope this move spurs more chain pharmacies to start developing their own analogs, furthering competition in the space. Race to the bottom would be great.
Sure, OTC stuff may differ given the different markets, but I’m highly skeptical of this spurring any sort of race to the bottom that doesn’t also come with large asterisks around quality, qualification to purchase, etc.
Where are you getting the $6-7 figure from? Artisan insulin makers? Feels like every insulin maker out there operates at walmart's scale, if not bigger. If that's where we're getting the $6-7 figure from, then it's not reasonable to expect it to drop any further.
$5.32-8.87 cost of production depending on the insulin analog.
As noted above, I did not account for R&D and manufacturing capacity.
Regardless, I tried to estimate conservatively at a $12-13 per vial overall cost. My napkin math is certainly wrong.
The point is that Walmart still stands to generate a multi-billion dollar per year profit on the sale of this insulin. (Unless my market capture estimate is wrong by an order of 6+, which it could be)
To be clear, I’m not opposed (in fact grateful) that Walmart is competing in the insulin market. However, I still find it unfortunate that we in the United States pay more for Insulin than any other country in the world, even with this competition.
Benevolent? It's not exactly hard to be more benevolent than the medical establishment.
I would like to live in a world where we can both be sensitive about certain topics, but also be able start hard discussions - for example "don't live an unhealthy lifestyle, exercise, eat better, or you're going to be the only one to blame if you get sick from X, Y, Z".
Deleted Comment
This is an insulin analog, which is a more modern patented drug.
Regular insulin is available for $25/vial at Walmart already. Could be cheaper, yes, but at that price it's already approaching their costs of production, distribution, and sales.
I hope the price of this insulin analog trends downward toward the $25 price of regular insulin.
I wonder if every company was like this, what would happen to the world.
Not meaning to cast any shade at this insulin product; it looks like a substantial improvement over what the US "market" for insulin was offering before.