Montreal: Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused American pharmaceutical companies Sunday of letting diabetic patients die out of “greed,” after he accompanied a group of Americans to Canada to buy insulin.
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Sanders joined the group, which took a bus from the US city of Detroit to Windsor, Ontario to restock on insulin, which costs 10 times more in the United States than in its northern neighbour.
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“How come the same exact medicine, in this case insulin, is sold here in Canada for one-tenth of the price it is sold in the United States?” Sanders demanded after visiting a Windsor pharmacy.
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“It is collusion, it is corruption and it is greed.”
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Insulin is a hormone normally produced by the pancreas that regulates blood sugar levels in the body. Diabetics cannot produce sufficient levels of it themselves and are thus dependent on commercially manufactured supplements.
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In the United States, one vial costs an average of $340 (Dh1,250).
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Sanders, who made affordable health care a main tenet of both his 2016 and 2020 presidential platforms, also accused the pharmaceutical industry of spending billions lobbying Congress in order to keep drug prices exorbitantly high.
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“They buy and sell politicians, Republicans and Democrats,” the Vermont senator said.
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“In the last 20 years, they have spent billions of dollars on lobbying Congress to make sure that they can continue to charge the American people any price they want.”
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Before the trip to Canada, Sanders also attacked the pharmaceutical industry in an interview with CNN.
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‘People are dying’
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“If I have a product that costs me a few dollars to make, and I jack up that price and you can’t afford it, and you die, what do you call me?” he asked.
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He had posed the same question at a rally the night before, to which the crowd responded: “Murderer!”
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“You can call the drug company executives whatever you want, but what they are doing involves corruption – in my view, that’s price fixing,” he said in the interview.
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“The top 10 companies last year made $69 billion in profits. The top three insulin companies made $14 billion in profits. And people are rationing – one out of four people are rationing their insulin – and people are dying,” Sanders said.
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“That is unacceptable in the United States,” he added, noting that he would establish antitrust measures against drug companies if he is elected president.
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Insulin prices, which are set by the market, have tripled over the past decade in the United States.
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In Canada, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, an independent quasi-judicial organization, oversees medicine prices to ensure they never get too high.
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The group of Americans Sanders accompanied has already made two restocking trips to Canada since the start of the year.
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Although the trips don’t happen often and are also intended to draw attention to the plight of diabetics in the United States, they are becoming a source of concern for Canadians.
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According to the CBC, a group of 15 organizations representing health sector employees sent a letter to the Canadian health ministry, asking for it to establish measures to prevent eventual insulin shortages.
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