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Diabetic patients with access to cheaper medications may be less likely to experience preventable health complications. February Survey The discovery was made by researchers at Duke University and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, a non-profit health care company.
The researchers looked at 10,588 people with diabetes aged 12 to 64 who had private health insurance that included a preferred drug list (PDL) — a benefit that can reduce the cost of medications such as insulin — between 2004 and 2017. Compared to a control group of 690,075 people with diabetes who did not have access to a PDL, study participants “had small improvements in short-term health outcomes” when their medications were more affordable.
“We see that out-of-pocket costs have gone down,” study co-author Frank Wharram, a professor at the Duke Margolis Center for Health Policy, told Healthcare Brew. “We see that medication use has gone up and we see that comorbidities have gone down.”
PDL subjects paid an average of $24.10 less per insulin pill and $5.80 less per non-insulin diabetes pill compared to the control group. According to the study, people with diabetes in the United States spend an average of $150 to $500 each year on antidiabetic drugs.
Patients who paid lower premiums experienced 8% fewer days of diabetes-related complications, such as bacterial infections and acute coronary artery disease, per year, translating to about 20 fewer complication days per 1,000 people with diabetes per year. For PDL patients in low-income areas, the benefit was even greater, with a 10% reduction in complication rates, according to the study.
“When out-of-pocket costs went down, people did indeed use more medicines, and that was concentrated among lower-income groups,” Wharram said, referring to a similar study conducted in 2021.
More than 11% of the U.S. population, or 38.4 million people, have diabetes. Per According to the American Diabetes Association, diabetes is more prevalent among non-white groups. It costs the U.S. healthcare system approximately $327 billion annually, and complications account for 48% to 64% of a diabetic's lifetime medical costs. according to To the CDC.
Wallam said lowering the cost of medicines could help reduce those costs.
“These patients will stay on their medications,” Wharram says, “and they'll have lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, and most importantly, lower blood sugar for diabetes, and they'll be less likely to develop acute, preventable complications.”