Enlarge / Advocates with T1Internationals New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut Chapters held a vigil on September 5, 2019, outside of Eli Lilly's offices honoring those who have lost their lives due to the high cost of insulin and demand lower insulin prices. (credit: Getty | Erik McGregor )

Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, one of the country's leading insulin makers, announced Wednesday that it will slash its high list prices for some of its insulins and will immediately offer programs to limit out-of-pocket costs to $35 per month for people with commercial insurance as well as those who are uninsured.

The price cap matches the one set by the federal government for Medicare, which went into effect this year via the Inflation Reduction Act.

While Lilly's announcement comes just two months after enactment of the government's $35 cap, it follows years of blistering outrage over the skyrocketing prices of insulin in the US, widely seen as price gouging.

Enlarge / Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla talks during a press conference with the European Commission president after a visit to oversee the production of the Pfizer-BioNtech COVID-19 vaccine at the factory of US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, in Puurs, on April 23, 2021. (credit: Getty | John Thys )

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla claimed at a news event last week that the company's COVID-19 vaccines will continue to be "free to all Americans," despite the company's plan to raise the price of the vaccine roughly 400 percent—a price difference that will be picked up by health insurers.

The company said in October that it plans to raise the price of a dose of its COVID-19 vaccine from about $30 to somewhere between $110 and $130 as it moves the shots to the commercial market next year.

Until now, all COVID-19 vaccines in the US have been bought by the US government, which paid $30.48 per dose in its latest vaccine supply agreement from June. The US government had previously paid $24 per dose in July 2021 and $19.50 per dose in July 2020. The government offered all the doses to Americans for free.

Enlarge / Advocates held a vigil in September 2019 outside of Eli Lillys' offices in New York City, honoring those who have lost their lives due to the high cost of insulin and demanding lower insulin prices. (credit: Getty | Erik McGregor )

Social media platform Twitter has been mired by uncertainty and disorder in the few, yet lengthy, days since billionaire Elon Musk took the helm. But above the din of fake accounts and capricious policy changes, a fury-fueled dialogue has erupted on the platform over what is, perhaps, an unexpected topic—the exorbitant price of insulin.

Early Thursday afternoon (EST), an account posing as pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, with the Twitter handle @EliLillyandCo, the company's logo, and blue checkmark by its name—which formerly only signaled verification of the account's identity but has since marked accounts of those who simply paid an $8 subscription fee—tweeted the enticing but false claim: "We are excited to announce insulin is free now."

The tweet , which stayed publicly viewable for at least four hours, began a viral spread, garnering at least 1,798 retweets and 12,800 likes before the account was set to protected , meaning that only approved followers can see its tweets. The account currently shows zero followers.

Enlarge (credit: Mike Kemp/Getty Images)

At the end of September, a spot of good news: Relyvrio, a new drug for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—or ALS, a neurological disorder without a cure—was approved in the United States. The ALS community rejoiced; the drug’s authorization was described as a “long-sought victory for patients.”

But the next day, the price of the medicine was revealed: $158,000 a year . This was far higher than what the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, an independent nonprofit that analyzes health care costs, had estimated would be a reasonable price, which it deemed to be between $9,100 and $30,700.