Senator Collins Delivers Floor Remarks Urging Support for Her INSULIN Act

Bill would cap the cost of insulin at $35 per month for Americans on private and employer-sponsored insurance, create pilot program for uninsured Americans with diabetes.

Click HERE to watch and HERE to download video of her remarks.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Susan Collins today delivered remarks from the Senate floor urging her colleagues to support the Improving Needed Safeguards for Users of Lifesaving Insulin Now (INSULIN) Act, bipartisan legislation she introduced last month with Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), John Kennedy (R-LA), and Raphael Warnock (D-GA). The INSULIN Act would cap the cost of insulin at $35 per month for Americans on private and employer-sponsored insurance and create a pilot program to provide insulin at the same cost to Americans without insurance.

A transcript of her remarks is as follows:

"Mr. President, I rise today to speak about a bill that Senator Shaheen and I introduced recently. It is called the Improving Needed Safeguards for Users of Lifesaving Insulin Now Act, or the INSULIN Act. This bill would make insulin more affordable for Americans with diabetes.

[…]

"In 1997, Mr. President, I founded the Senate Diabetes Caucus after meeting with a family from Maine who had a 10-year-old son with type 1 diabetes. I'll never forget this young boy looking up at me and saying to me that he wished that he could just take one day off from having Type 1 diabetes, his birthday or Christmas, just one day. But of course, he could not. It was then that I knew that I had to dedicate my efforts toward earlier diagnosis, better treatments and technology, and one day, a cure.

[…]

"Now, Mr. President, insulin was first isolated more than 100 years ago in Canada, and the scientists who did discover it gave away, essentially, the patent rights because they wanted insulin to be available and affordable to everyone who needed it. Tens of millions of Americans rely on insulin as part of their daily treatment for their diabetes. For children, teens, and adults with Type 1 diabetes, insulin is not optional. It is literally a matter of life or death.

[…]

"While there are some exciting and extraordinary scientific breakthroughs in cell and gene therapy that may change this-and the sooner, the better-the fact is that today, people who are dependent on insulin still face great anxiety about its affordability. I have heard from far too many people across Maine and across this country who, because of the escalating cost of insulin, feel they have to ration their insulin and do not take the full dose that their physician has prescribed and that they need to be healthy. Let me tell you of one example. Bek Hoskins of Chelsea, Maine, is a young adult. Bek was forced to skip her doses of insulin to try to make it last longer, to stretch it out, because she simply could not afford the cost. In one profoundly memorable instance, Bek pushed her body's limit too far, and she ended up in the emergency room. Her husband, Barrett, rushed her through a snowstorm to the hospital, and she nearly died because she tried to go without insulin for two days. Such a dangerous, preventable crisis should never occur. We must address this life-threatening problem.

[…]

"Mr. President, the INSULIN Act will help make insulin more affordable for Americans, both those with and without insurance, by capping the cost and addressing fundamental flaws in the insulin market and the FDA approval process. I thank the American Diabetes Association, Breakthrough T1D, and The Endocrine Society for endorsing this much needed legislation."

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