A big assist is coming to New Yorkers with private insurance who need to pay for insulin. New York’s first-in-the-nation law eliminating insulin copays for private insurance users starts in 2025.

Assemblymember and pharmacist John McDonald III said it's a huge win for patients.

“Insulin has had a very long history of rapidly escalating prices, some due to pharma, some due to the PBMs that solicit rebates from pharma," McDonald said. "But the bottom line is the patients are the ones who have suffered, and this is an opportunity for patients to actually have that barrier removed.”

New Yorkers who receive insulin through their Medicare plan will not have their prescriptions affected. Their insulin is still capped at $35.

But for all others, McDonald said this will ease their monthly budgets.

“Sometimes, their copayments and deductibles can be $50, $75, even a couple hundred dollars a month," he said. "This is going to take that burden off them and actually reduce a lot of the challenges they have in their household budgets.”

McDonald doesn’t expect it to affect pharmacists in any way.

However, he would like to see more lifesaving drugs potentially have their copays and cost barriers eliminated as well, including epipens and chemotherapy.

“We can actually, number one, improve the total outcome; and two, reduce unnecessary wasteful spending," he said.