She found that OTC insulin is more frequently sold at Walmart than other chain pharmacies, likely due to the considerably lower price point. Chain pharmacies can also sell regular, NPH, and 70-30 insulin to patients over the counter, says Goldstein. Walmart sells all three types under the ReliOn brand umbrella for roughly $25 a vial. The three main types of over-the-counter insulin are regular insulin (short-acting), NPH (intermediate-acting), and a premixed combination of NPH and regular called 70-30, says Trujillo. It’s different from newer insulins that are called insulin analogs. OTC insulin is also called synthetic human insulin. How Exactly Does OTC Insulin Work and How Does It Differ From Newer Insulins? For example, people with type 1 diabetes spent nearly double the yearly amount in 2012 versus 2016, according to the Health Care Cost Institute. “The cost of insulin has increased so dramatically that many more patients are facing cost issues than ever before,” says Trujillo. People on Medicare in the “ donut hole,” a coverage gap where patients are often pay more for drugs, might be paying more out-of-pocket for insulin and looking for relief. “For some patients, this is the only alternative they have.”īesides people without health insurance, Trujillo says that people with high copays or high-deductible plans might be considering OTC insulin. “I think we have to accept the fact that some patients don’t have an option but to use the least expensive option available,” says Dr. Jennifer Trujillo, PharmD, CDE, associate professor at the University of Colorado Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in Aurora, says she also has patients ask about cheaper options. Other fixes include Cigna and Express Scripts offering a $25 cap on out-of-pocket insulin costs for its consumers in participating plans. In March 2019, Eli Lilly announced it would sell a cheaper generic version of its Humalog 100 insulin for about $137 a vial, effectively cutting the price of the original in half. Insulin prices have risen dramatically in recent years, nearly tripling from 2002 to 2013 according to an article published in April 2016 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Goldstein decided to research OTC insulin because she prescribes ReliOn brand insulin as the least expensive option for people without health insurance in her clinical practice. Why People Sometimes Turn to OTC Insulin for Blood Sugar Controlĭr. Thus, people interested in saving money by using this insulin option need to take certain steps before doing so. RELATED: Why Is Insulin So Expensive? (And What to Do if You Can’t Afford It)ĭespite the seemingly increasing use of OTC insulin, healthcare providers want people with diabetes to know that the injections aren’t one to one with prescription insulin. Walmart does not make its sales data public, so the researchers gathered this data by calling Walmart and other chain pharmacies to ask about daily sales. “We were surprised that it was sold so frequently,” says study author Jennifer Goldstein, MD, assistant program director of internal medicine at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Delaware. It’s unclear how many people are using OTC insulin because the meds aren’t tracked like prescription insulin, but an article published in February 2019 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine suggested that people often buy ReliOn insulin and that Walmart sells up to 18,800 vials per day at its pharmacies in 49 states. While it’s been available to people for decades because of a loophole in prescription regulations, recently OTC insulin became more affordable when Walmart teamed up with drugmaker Novo Nordisk to sell its own Walmart brand called ReliOn insulin for $25 a vial. The cost of insulin is a serious problem for many people with diabetes, and one affordable option is over-the-counter, or OTC, insulin.
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