Bipartisan insulin price cap introduced in House as lawmakers seek affordability win
Conservative principles face implementation challenges as policy meets political complexity.
Two battleground Republicans just signed onto a price cap their own party has spent years calling government overreach. That tells you something about where this is headed politically, whatever you think of the policy itself. Insulin has become the poster child for everything voters hate about American health care pricing, and lawmakers up for reelection know it.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Bipartisan House lawmakers, including two battleground Republicans, introduced legislation Thursday to ensure people with private health insurance don’t pay more than $35 a month for insulin. Lawmakers have discussed the idea of an insulin cap for years but haven’t been able to get legislation over the finish line over GOP resistance to government setting prices.
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
Two battleground Republicans just signed onto a price cap their own party has spent years calling government overreach. That tells you something about where this is headed politically, whatever you think of the policy itself. Insulin has become the poster child for everything voters hate about American health care pricing, and lawmakers up for reelection know it. When your constituents are rationing a drug that costs pennies to make, "market forces will sort it out" stops being a winning argument at the doorstep.
We've never been fans of Washington setting prices for private goods, and that instinct hasn't changed. Price controls have a track record, and it's not a good one. Cap what insurers pay and somewhere down the line you get less innovation, fewer new formulations, manufacturers quietly making up margin elsewhere. Insulin didn't get expensive by accident. It got expensive because of a rigged rebate system between manufacturers, PBMs, and insurers that nobody in Congress has had the stomach to actually dismantle. A $35 cap treats the symptom and leaves the disease untouched.
That said, conservatives shouldn't pretend the current system is some free-market success story worth defending as-is. It isn't. Diabetics have been getting fleeced by middlemen who add no value and answer to no one, and Republicans who just say no to every fix without offering their own are handing Democrats a talking point for nothing. If the House GOP wants to stop bipartisan price-cap bills from becoming the default answer every two years, it needs to put a real alternative on the table: break the PBM rebate scheme, force pricing transparency, let patients see who's actually pocketing the markup.
Until that happens, don't be surprised when more Republicans in swing districts decide a $35 cap is an easier vote than another town hall explaining why they didn't have a better idea.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.