The Endocrine Society & AMA Address Rising Insulin Prices

The American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates met in June to establish policy positions on topics of importance to patients and healthcare providers. The Society attends the AMA meetings to further our policy agenda by garnering the support of the House of Delegates on issues of importance to our members. This enables us to take that message to Capitol Hill and federal agencies as an additional means of support. In addition to passing policy that supports the Society’s priorities, we also fight against passage of policy that will be detrimental to endocrinologists or the patients that they treat.

The House of Delegates offers a means to generate support in the medical community for potential policy solutions to the problem of high insulin prices. At the November 2017 House of Delegates meeting, the Society teamed up with the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) to introduce a resolution urging the AMA to pursue several initiatives aimed at improving insulin affordability for patients with diabetes. Overwhelming support for addressing insulin costs expressed on the floor of the House of Delegates led to a unanimous vote for the AMA to study these issues and provide a report with findings and recommendations to the House of Delegates.

The resulting report was introduced at June’s meeting and is now policy of the AMA. Recommendations for addressing the high costs and reducing the impact on patients include:

1. Encouraging the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to monitor insulin pricing and market competition and take enforcement actions as appropriate;
2. Disseminating model state legislation to promote increased drug price and cost transparency and to prohibit standard gag clauses that bar pharmacists from telling consumers about less-expensive options for purchasing their medication;
3. Supporting physician education regarding drug price and cost transparency and challenges that patients may encounter at the pharmacy;
4. Supporting legislation or regulation to ensure that private health insurance carriers declare which medications are available on their formularies by October 1 of the preceding year, and that drugs may not be removed from the formulary or moved to a higher cost tier within the policy year; and
5. Supporting cost-sharing requirements for prescription drugs that consider factors known to affect patient compliance and the development and use of tools and technology to enable physicians and patients to determine the actual price and out-of-pocket costs of prescription drugs prior to making prescribing decisions.

The AMA released a statement on June 13 announcing these recommendations, many of which are consistent with the Society’s priorities for addressing and lessening the impact of high insulin prices.

Policy proposals passed or referred for further study at the House of Delegates meeting that address other Society priorities include transgender placement in prison, banning sex assignment surgery in infants with disorders of sex development, barriers to obesity treatment, and integration of scientific evidence in EPA policies. We are analyzing the impact of these new policies on our members and will work with the AMA to advance our mutual policy priorities.