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Annotated Bibliography
Karl S. Natividad
ENGL110: Making Writing Relevant
Dr. Melanie McBride
January 1, 2023
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Annotated Bibliography
Rajkumar, V. S. (2021). The High Cost of Insulin in the United States. An Urgent Call to Action
95(1), 22-28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mayocp.2019.11.013
The author of this article is a professor of hematology and is associated with the Mayo
Clinic proceedings. The author consults the problem of high cost of insulin in the United
States and how it is ten times more expensive compared to other developed countries.
The number one reason of the high cost of insulin in the United States mentioned by the
author is the targeted population, the people who need on insulin to survive, desperate for
the lifesaving product the targeted population is willing to pay however the market price
for insulin is. Also another reason of high cost of insulin in the United States is the virtual
monopolization on the lifesaving product. Novo, Nordisk, Sanofi-Avntis, and Eli Lilly
are the three main companies responsible for manufacturing and distributing almost every
insulin product sold in the United States. These companies continue a monopolistic hold
with no regulation in effect so these companies have full control over the products prices.
Moving on the author talks about multiple solutions pertaining to this problem, one
possible solution is protection against monopoly for existing and new drugs, the approach
is having life saving products like insulin regulated. By capping the maximum price of
the lifesaving products to the rate of inflation.
Cefalu, W. T., Dawes, D. E., Gavlak, G., Herman, W. H., Van Nuys, K., Powers, A. C., &
Taylor,
S. I. (2018). Insulin Access and Affordability Working Group.
Conclusions and Recommendations, 41, 1299-1311. https://doi.org/10.2337/dci18-0019
The authors in this article addresses the issue of insulin prices and how it affects the
consumers in the United States. There are more than 30 million Americans that are
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diagnosed with diabetes, majority of those people rely on insulin to survive, but for the
past two decades prices of insulin in the United States have tripled from 2002-2013.
Consumers of insulin that pay for it without insurance is presented the problem of
purchasing the medication or their daily necessities, often these consumers skip out on
buying the recommended amount of insulin that their body needs in order to afford their
daily lifestyle, resulting in short and long term health complications. Moving on the
authors talks about introducing biosimilar insulin in the market and talked about whether
it will lead to lower prices. Biosimilar insulin is insulin that is biologically similar to the
original insulin that companies like Novo and Nordisk produce but doesn’t contain the
sane identical ingredients. The production of biosimilar drugs are more complex
compared to small molecular medications like Tylenol because biological medications
are made from living cells and is expected to produce the same clinical results as the
insulin the other companies produce. There are currently no biosimilar insulin in the
market but three follow on biologic human insulin analogs have been approved by the
Food and Drug Association (FDA).
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