Attorney General suing manufacturers of insulin

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a lawsuit Tuesday against multiple pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmacy benefit manager's (PBM's).

Diabetics spend thousands of dollars on medication every year, even with the Biden Administration putting a price cap on insulin.

Drummond says that doesn't cover every diabetic drug, which is why he says more needs to be done.

"Oklahoma has been suffering from this exploitation by mandated insulin manufacturers in connection with PBM's, and nothing's been advanced," Drummond said. "We need to address that."

Drummond says pharmaceutical manufacturers have significantly raised the prices of their diabetes drugs during the last 15 years, despite the fact that the costs of producing them have gone down.

"25 years ago, the cost of that vial to the consumer was $20, today it's $300 to $700," Drummond said. "It's 1,000% market increase, that is for no reason. It's not based on market fundamentals. It's based on greed, corporate greed, conspiracy, things that just are despicable."

Oklahoma has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the nation, with 11% of the population, about 450,000 people, living with the disease.

"They're still taking advantage of Oklahomans in a huge way," Drummond said. "The cost of insulin related medicine in Oklahoma all year is about $6 billion a year."

The Biden Administration put a $35 price cap on insulin earlier this year, but Drummond says it's not enough.

"From an optic perspective, some of these pharmacies have said, hey, this one product, we'll give you $35 a vial, but there's another 400 that they're charging $300 to $700," Drummond said. "So, it's only a pretend solution."

Drummond is confident in the lawsuit and says once they are done with this, similar tactics could be used toward other over-priced drugs.

"There's a clear path to success with very little likelihood of failure," Drummond said. "So, we're going to run down this path as hard and aggressively as we can illustrate the conspiratorial actions of the manufacturers and the PBMs and then apply those lessons learned to other areas of drugs."

Drummond says the hope is to cut the cost of insulin and other diabetic drugs within the next two years.

They are also working toward a multi-disciplined litigation that would take on all the other drug manufacturers.