Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings is suing over insulin price hikes.
Jennings announced the lawsuit against several drug manufacturers and pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs earlier this week.
According to Jennings, they conspired to increase insulin prices by as much as 1,000 percent over the past 15 years.
“The level of greed that would drive someone to price-gouge consumers over life-saving diabetes medicine is almost unfathomable,” said Jennings. “It is an avarice that not only hurts diabetics across the country financially, but in many cases leads to medication hoarding and preventable deaths. The thousands of Delawareans living with diabetes need to know that we will hold these companies accountable.”
The lawsuit was filed in the Court of Chancery against the nation’s three primary insulin manufacturers, Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi as well as its three largest pharmacy benefit managers, CVS Caremark, Express Scripts and OptumRx.
The lawsuit alleges both groups coordinated to illegally raise insulin prices at the expense of diabetes patients in the state.
Delaware's DOJ says diabetes costs Delaware’s economy roughly $1.1 billion per year, and the uninsured have a diabetes prevalence rate of nearly twice the state’s average leaving them more susceptible to injury from an illegal pricing scheme.
