A settlement with drugmakers is bringing free insulin to Minnesota. Are you eligible?

At the Wellness Pharmacy in St. Paul, people with diabetes will not only be able to purchase insulin at a very low price, but soon get it for free. At the end of August, the pharmacy received its first order of free insulin — more than 50 boxes of short and long-acting Eli Lilly insulin — as part of a new settlement with the pharmaceutical company. 

The settlement resolves a long-running lawsuit between the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and at least two big drugmakers, Eli Lilly and Sanofi, over insulin prices. The drugmakers have agreed to supply 15 clinics serving low-income Minnesotans with free insulin for five years.

The settlement also guaranteed that all Minnesotans will be able to buy insulin for $35 a month. The Biden administration had already limited prices for insulin to $35 a month for seniors on Medicare. 

“No one should ever have to choose between affording their life and affording to live,” Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement. “If you need insulin to survive, you should be able to get that insulin. Period.”

Ellison said he hoped the settlement’s five-year window would give lawmakers time to find a “longer-term solution” to bring down insulin costs.

Hennepin Healthcare is among the providers receiving free insulin as part of the settlement. The drug will be available to patients with no insurance. 

“Some patients who don’t have insurance don’t seek out care,” said Christene Jolowsky, Hennepin Healthcare’s senior director of pharmacy. 

“Hopefully patients who did not get their insulin before for financial reasons are going to get their medication. This is an avenue for them that they can get their drugs, and maybe without fear.”

Nearly half of the patients at Wellness Pharmacy are homeless and its parent organization, Minnesota Community Care, was previously able to purchase medication for a few cents through a federal program. 

“Because of federal law a patient previously had to be a patient of our facility in order to qualify for that drug benefit,” said Ken Nelson, head of the pharmacy. 

“Now with this free insulin program, they literally could be coming off the street and not be a patient of ours and have access.” 

A life-saving drug

Having access to insulin is a matter of life or death for people with diabetes. High blood sugar damages the heart, kidney, liver or other organs and can lead to other diseases. If diabetics cannot access insulin, they risk life-threatening complications or death. 

In Minnesota, 390,000 people were diagnosed with diabetes in 2020, comprising 8.8% of the adult population, a record high. Diabetes disproportionately affects low-income Minnesotans, and Black, Native American, Hispanic and Asian patients face higher risk of complications. 

Rebekah Floyd is the community health navigator at Sabathani Community Center in south Minneapolis. She said racial health disparities, when it comes to diabetes, are linked to lack of access to health care and medication. 

“With a lot of our Native American population that live maybe in reservations in northern Minnesota, they don’t have access to health care,” Floyd said, noting that doctors and clinics can be far from reservations, and inaccessible without a car. 

Managing diabetes is also a matter of access to food. “Some of the reservations, they get food commodities,” she added. “They don’t have stores, so they don’t get good food.” 

At Sabathani, Floyd organizes workshops to help residents of south Minneapolis, an area with a high number of diabetics, manage this disease. 

The Community Center offers cooking classes, walk-in tours and a chronic disease management class. The goal is not only to show different ways of cooking and healthy eating, but to increase literacy about the disease. Sabathani also provides food during those classes. A food shelf is open at the center from Monday to Thursday. 

“Another thing that’s really hard is when people are struggling to survive,” Floyd said. “Sometimes the first thing on their mind is finding a place to live, getting something to eat — they’re not really thinking about ‘Do I have diabetes or not?’”

Catching up to other countries

Quinn Nystrom was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 13. She remembers her pediatrician telling her to hold on until she reached college, because by then, there would be a cure for the disease. 

More than 20 years later, she cannot leave her house without a vial of insulin, some food and without checking her blood sugar levels. 

Nystrom is now the chapter leader of #Insulin4all in Minnesota. Along with Nicole Smith-Holt — the mother of Alec Smith, who died in 2017 after he could not afford $1,300 a month for his insulin — she fought for the state’s Insulin Affordability Act, which was passed in 2020.

Most clinics that are part of the settlement are in the Twin Cities metro area or Duluth, which limits who can get the free insulin, Nystrom said. 

“If people can’t afford insulin, I doubt they can take a day off of work to travel,” she said. “Most people when you run out of insulin, you run out quick and you need it fast.” 

Quinn also noted the settlement solely includes Eli Lilly insulin, and patients who are on other brands might not want to switch. 

“When we only live a couple hours from the Canadian border, U.S. diabetes advocates are not going to stop working until we have something similar to other developed countries,” Nystrom said. 

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