The FTC, led by chair Lina Khan, is seeking to ultimately lower insurance premiums as well as wholesale prices, which in the case of Humalog, an Eli Lilly insulin drug, ballooned more than 1,200 per cent between 1999 and 2017, to more than $274, according to the agency.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued the country's three largest pharmacy benefit managers on Friday, accusing them of steering diabetes patients towards higher priced insulin in order to reap millions of dollars in rebates from pharmaceutical companies.