Due to the American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed into law in March of 2021, the nation’s three major insulin makers have significantly dropped their prices for insulin in Pennsylvania as of January 1, writes Isabel Soisson for The Keystone.

Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk, which together make up around 90 percent of the market, are now all officially offering price caps and savings programs that allow individuals to get some of their most widely-used insulin products for just $35 per month.

The price cuts will benefit more than 8 million Americans who rely on the drug to survive. In Pennsylvania, 11.3 percent of adults have diabetes, with hundreds of thousands of them using insulin.

The changes came after a provision of the American Rescue Plan had threatened to penalize the manufacturers if they kept their prices high. The 2021 law changed the rules that guide the Medicaid health insurance program and removed the cap on the penalty companies pay for increasing list prices above the inflation rate.

“Insulin costs less than $10 to make, but Americans are sometimes forced to pay over $300 for it,” said President Biden last year. “It’s flat wrong.”

Read more about insulin prices in The Keystone.