Having read the article entirely, the answer is kinda. This particular patient had a lot of complications as a result of their diabetes, so they had to use a bunch of extra medications to prevent complications. No clue how expensive those were, but thats not a cost inherant to the process. If you were “fixed” as soon as your diabetes becomes apparant, that wouldnt be neccassary.

They also did a bunch of animal testing after having gone through the process of creating the cells. Strictly speaking, not meccassary for the future. It was neccassary here as it is a novel approach, and it will continue being neccassary until this is a regularly permormed operation. Once the process is widely regarded to be safe, and weve dialed in the exact process to controlling the production, that sortve testing should become obselete.

Finally, the transplant is absurdly cheap. Basically free.

All together, the reasearch is absurdly more expensive than the process. For most of the world, this should be a very effective, cheap, relatively fast, and noninvasive. This is huge news! Of course in the US you cant afford it.