Even as a medical student, I was interested in the history of insulin. As an endocrine fellow, I read The Discovery of Insulin by Michael Bliss (1). It is a book anyone interested in diabetes should read, as life before insulin is difficult to appreciate by today’s standard of care, at least in the United States. Amazing stories of what people did to obtain insulin are plentiful, perhaps none more dramatic than Eva Saxl’s story, with her husband making insulin in Shanghai, China, for the more than 200 Jews who escaped Nazi persecution during World War II (2). But in the United States, access to insulin had never been a problem. As a medication required for survival by 10% of those with diabetes, it was always available, although for decades quite crude by today’s standards. The insulin patent from the University of Toronto was sold for $1 with the understanding that cheap insulin would become available (3). Through the years, insulin remained affordable. Even with the introduction of human insulin in 1982 ($14 per vial) and then insulin analogs in 1996 ($24 per vial), the increases in insulin pricing did not seem to be a concern. At least in the United States, the vast majority of patients requiring insulin had access to all of the insulin analogs as they were developed. As the years passed, the cost of insulin continued to increase. In 2004, I was asked to write a review of insulin analogs, which was published in early 2005 (4). Just before publication, one of the reviewers asked me to publish the costs of the insulin products. In those days, we used the Web site drugstore.com to compare prices, and, in general, vials of insulin analogs cost ∼$60 each. Although this represented a substantial price increase since the …