Flu fun, and a discovery about insulin's cost

No fun these days - H was sick with a flu all week, which meant caring for her while trying to get some work done. I myself ended up really ill for just one day. I was glad to have the insulin pump, because I couldn't eat a bite. If I were taking shots, it would've been hard to avoid needing to eat. As it was, the hardest part of the week was listening to Elmo far too many times!

Just a follow-up note about my insulin misdelivery: I learned that the form of insulin I'm now using, novolog, is really temperature stable. Since it was in a styrofoam container, sitting outside overnight in teens temperature was apparently okay. It works.

But in the process of worrying about whether I could use this insulin, I learned that, if I were to buy the same insulin without a prescription at a regular pharmacy, it would cost more than twice as much as it did about four years ago (the last time I had to get insulin without a prescription, when my pump suddenly stopped working at all, at 10:00 one night). Actually, I was using regular humulin at that time - not quite as fancy as humalog - but I learned that even that insulin is more than twice what it cost only a few years ago. It used to cost $60 a vial; now it costs about $160!

Now, what would explain a near trippling of cost for exactly the same medication, in just a few years? I know that "humanized" insulin (made from bacteria genetically altered to produce it, as opposed to animal-based insulin) became the only thing available as of a few years ago. But even the very same, humanized insulin cost far less only very recently. Is it possible we're just being held hostage because our options have become that much more limited? I'd find that a difficult excuse to swallow, if that's all it is. If anyone has ideas, I'd love to hear them!