diabetes insulin big pharma
© Reuters / Carlos OsorioAllison Nimlos, a type 1 diabetes advocate from the US, during a trip to buy lower cost insulin in London, Ontario, Canada, June 29, 2019.

Notice that, in the US, she can afford the luxury object in her left hand, no problem. But not the essential object in her right hand...
Big Pharma's price-gouging has forced a group of Americans to take a 15-hour drive across the border to Canada just to buy life-saving drugs and avoid the "astronomical cost" at home, one of the trip's organizers told RT.

In the US, the price of insulin has nearly doubled in five years. In order the get the life-saving medicine, a group of people from Minnesota recently spent 15 hours driving more than 815 miles in a bus to Canada, where it is much cheaper.

Many Americans just can't afford to buy the drugs they desperately need at home, the trip's co-organizer Quinn Nystrom told RT, adding that the price difference across the border is "huge."
"I just went to CVS in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The retail price of the vial [of insulin] is $340. When I went to London, Ontario to pick it up at Walmart pharmacy there, in US dollars the retail price was $26.

From the high cost of insulin, I've had to go into debt because of it. I've had to put it on credit card. I've had to reach out to family members to help me pay for it because it had gotten too expensive, and I can't cover it because of astronomical cost."
Nicole Smith-Holt from the charity T1International, which helps people with type 1 diabetes, told RT that Big Pharma had become notorious for hiking the cost of their drugs for decades.
"There is just no reason why [the drug prices] had been increasing to the point where people are dying because they can't afford their insulin. My own family has paid the ultimate price of the pharmaceutical companies price-gouging their patients.

In 2017, my 26-year-old son died from diabetic ketoacidosis. He was rationing [his insulin] because he couldn't afford it. The monthly price for his insulin and diabetic supplies was $1,300."