Insulin price hiking: Who's at fault?

Insulin prices may have increased, like, tenfold in the past decade and change — and drug makers are facing a lot of heat. But it’s not just the pharma companies that are at fault, STAT’s Nicholas Florko writes. Generic drug makers, doctors, and even the FDA all share in the blame.

Congress will soon investigate the broken biopharma market, and lawmakers have identified the three main insulin suppliers — Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and Eli Lilly — as top targets for questioning. But why aren’t other players, including federal drug regulators, also up for scrutiny?

“Everyone is at fault, which is makes it hard to figure out how to fix it,” Dr. Walid Gellad, who heads the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing, told STAT.