Another week, another tranche of insulin news

The Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee is planning to hold a hearing on the rising price of insulin the second week of April, multiple lobbyists and congressional staffers confirmed to STAT. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), the ranking member on the subcommittee, first hinted at the hearing during a marathon drug pricing hearing earlier this month, but the committee has yet to formally announce the hearing.

(The committee’s press secretary declined to comment, though the committee did announce late Monday a separate markup on a slew of drug pricing bills. That hearing is set to be held Wednesday.)

Whether the three big insulin makers — Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk — will be called to testify before the committee remains to be seen. None of the three responded to questions from STAT.

Speaking of insulin, there are some signs that follow-on insulin products are starting to save some money. A new research letter published yesterday in the Journal of the American Medical Association from drug pricing experts at the University of Pittsburgh found that Basaglar, the first follow-on insulin product to launch in the U.S., is capturing significant market share in Medicaid. The report shows that Basaglar, which is roughly 15 percent cheaper than Sanofi’s Lantus, now has captured more than one-third of the Medicaid market.

But there's an important caveat: The researchers looked only at Medicaid. The use of Basaglar is significantly lower in Medicare than it is in Medicaid. Inmaculada Hernandez, the lead researcher on the JAMA paper, told STAT that in 2017 Basaglar captured only 0.7 percent of the Medicare market. That may be due to the so-called rebate trap, which has been blamed for thwarting the uptake of lower-cost products in Medicare.