Americans with diabetes are busing across the US-Canada border to get insulin for 12 times less than it costs them at home.
Led by local Minnesota politician and diabetes advocate, Quinn Nystrom, dozens of people crossed the border to purchase insulin for about $27 a vial. In the US, each unit of the same life-saving drug would have cost $340.
Some seven million Americans rely on insulin injections or pumps to replace the critical metabolic hormone that they can’t make or are resistant to.
Despite President Trump’s promises to cut drug prices, countless Americans have to break the bank every month just to pay for this common medication – or else go to Canada for it.
Some of the 40 Americans that traveled to Canada to buy cheaper insulin in a ‘caravan’ of cars and buses pose in front of one of their vehicles with signs demanding lower US prices
Insulin was invented in 1923, by Frederick Banting, a Canadian scientist and doctor.
Banting and his co-inventor, John Macleod, were awarded the Nobel Prize for their discovery, but Banting didn’t even want to patent it.
He felt that to patent and profit from a medical discovery was a contradiction of his Hippocratic oath.
Eventually, two of his co-creators who had not taken the oath patented the drug instead. They sold it to the University of Toronto for $1, with every intention that it always be readily available to those who needed it.
Trip organizer and diabetes advocate Quinn Nystrom poses with the cheaper insulin vial she bought in Canada while wearing a shirt bearing the names of the men who invented the drug – and wanted it to be accessible
It’s an often-cited story, but it sheds light on a stark irony. The price of insulin has shot up by over 1,000 percent in less than 100 years.
Prices for insulin have skyrocketed year over year – particularly in the US.
The three enormous drug companies that make insulin have filed patent after patent in the US – and done similarly in other countries with like patent systems to maintain a hold on their corner of the market.
With each new patent has come to a price hike.
Some of the cost is covered by insurance, but without anyone really representing the interests of patients in the drug price negotiations between pharmacies, drug companies and insurers, even insured patients pay a high price for insulin.
Without insurance, the three main types of insulin cost between $275 and $289 per vial. Many people with type 1 diabetes need up to three vials a week.
That means that, before insurance, a person might need to spend $867 a month, or about 60 percent of the monthly earnings for a person working 50 hour a week at a minimum wage job.
That’s too much, in the opinion of Quinn Nystrom, a seasoned diabetes advocate and former city council member from Baxter City, Minnesota.
Nystrom is herself a type 1 diabetes sufferer and she and her family have had to shell out the cash for her insulin injections since she was a child.
But she’s tired of doing it, especially when affordable insulin is just a border crossing away.
Some of the Americans who traveled to Canada to get cheaper insulin rode together on a charter bus, which made stops to pick up travelers from multiple states
Led by Quinn Nystrom, a Minnesota politician and diabetes advocate (center), the Americans emerged triumphant from a Canadian pharmacy
Last week, she led the charge for a whole caravan of some 40 Americans to ride charter buses from Minnesota and surrounding states into Canada, just to get cheaper insulin for themselves or loved ones.
To add a bit of meaning to the mission, Nystrom and her posse chose not just anywhere, but to London, Ontario, Canada, where Bantam first invented the medicine.
They stocked up as much as customs and local laws would allow before heading back to the US with the spoils of their efforts in hand.
Even without insurance, their savings were stunning.
One woman paid just $268 for insulin for her son which would have cost her far over 10 times as much had she purchased it in the US.
‘Bittersweet that we couldn’t help more ppl w/ diabetes bc we could only bring back insulin 4 personal use & some couldn’t come bc of the cost of the trip. We are committed to ensuring [legislative] change,’ said Nysytrom in a tweet.
US citizens can bring legal drugs back in from another country legally, so long as they have been approved in the US, are not for personal use, and exist (generally) of less than a three-month supply.
It’s not a fix to the underlying problem, but it certainly was a triumph for Nystrom and her group of insulin rebels.
‘Pure joy as we walk out of the pharmacy in []Canada] after buying insulin for 12x less than the [US]…We have a problem! 1 in 4 Americans are rationing their insulin because they can’t afford it,’ she wrote in a tweet.