As Big Pharma continues to jack up the cost of insulin in a greedy scheme to price-gouge diabetics, the state of Colorado did something about it this week in a victory for affordable and accessible prescription medications.
Currently, patients have been charged up to $1,000 a month for live-saving insulin that is supposed to be dirt cheap. Dr. Frederick Banting discovered the drug 100 years ago and chose to give the patent away for free because he wanted diabetics to have access to affordable insulin.
Sadly, Big Pharma corporations have been raising the price so high that Americans have to choose between bankruptcy and saving their lives or travel overseas or across international borders to purchase it at far lower costs in countries that have universal healthcare systems.
The people of Colorado will no longer have to make that decision, because Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed a bill into law on Wednesday that caps the price of insulin to $100 for a month’s supply.
“We declare that the days of insulin price-gouging are over in Colorado,” Polis said during the signing ceremony.
The law now serves as an example of how other states can cap drug prices to benefit their citizens and choose health over corporate profit. But the law goes much further.
According to the Denver Post:
The new law also requires Attorney General Phil Weiser to investigate why drug manufacturers started rapidly raising the price of insulin in recent years, and it tasks the Department of Law with issuing a report of his findings by November 2020.
Weiser can start by listening to this industry whistleblower, who revealed earlier this year that Big Pharma execs collude to raise prices to avoid having to compete with each other. This way, they all get rich and people who desperately need medication lose regardless of whether they choose to pay the exorbitant cost or not.
The fact is that healthcare should not be run by the private sector. Corporations will only make profit-based decisions instead of doing the right thing. Americans have been discovering just how much they have been getting screwed over the years by visiting other countries. An American citizen in Taiwan recently discovered that his entire emergency room medical bill and prescription medication costed him all of $80 instead of the tens of thousands he would be charged in the United States.
And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has pulled the curtain back on one Big Pharma company that charges nearly $2,000 for a medication that only costs $8 overseas.
Colorado is now the first state to actually do something to control the price of drugs. Hopefully, other states will follow.
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