The Impotent Ignorance of U.S. Legislators

"The Canadian medicine supply is not sufficient to support both Canadian and U.S. consumers. The supply simply does not, and will not, exist within Canada to meet such demands."
"Hospital and community pharmacies in Canada are resourced to serve the Canadian public. they are not equipped to support the needs of a country ten times its size without creating important access or quality issues."
Warning communication to Canada's Minister of Health

Quinn Nystrom holds insulin she purchased in Canada after travelling over the border for more affordable medication. (Lorenda Reddekopp/CBC)

It is grossly inconceivable that people with diabetes, requiring the hormone insulin to manage their chronic disease, ensure quality of life and life itself, are faced in the United States -- where pharmaceutical companies who manufacture human-type insulin for broad consumption nationwide value the free enterprise system over adequate profits with the assurance that their product prolongs lives -- with steeply unaffordable costs for vials of insulin. There are times, and none more urgent than this one, when government intervention should be required to correct such a dire situation.

It belies belief that a free enterprise system can be so bereft of human values beyond profit that it can without conscience raise the cost of an elemental, vital drug from $30 to $300, placing it beyond the reach of people desperate to continue a difficult-enough therapeutic mode sustaining and prolonging life. That drug manufacturers can and do raise prices to such impossible levels is breath-takingly incongruous given that drugs manufacturing has a purpose and that purpose is now interrupted by greed.

Federal and state legislators in the United States, in recognition of the plight of people with diabetes without health insurance either through employment or independent means, whose incomes are modest and strained beyond acceptability by sky-rocketing costs of medication, have turned not to enacting needed legislation to curtail manufacturing greed, or to supplement the costs of such vital drugs through public subscription, but to allowing Americans to purchase their drugs abroad where they are available at a tenth of the cost.

Laws permitting residents of various states to import drugs from Canada represents no kind of a workable solution to the crisis inflicted upon American diabetics. It is beyond ludicrous that someone like Senator Bernie Sanders plans to highlight the issue by accompanying Americans with diabetes to Canada on an insulin-buying trip. That people with diabetes in the United States must organize trips to Canada to enable them to buy a drug that sustains their lives is beyond incredible.

The very country known for its manufacturing of drugs and their wide distribution -- and the greed of those involved in manufacturing -- sees a situation now where diabetics ration their medication, fearful of not having enough to maintain a balance of wellness. In so doing they risk hastening the onset of complications that ensue from diabetes such as neuropathy, blindness, kidney failure, heart conditions. The issue represents a country-wide medical emergency.

As for Canada; recent years have seen Canadian pharmaceutical manufacturers reporting thousands of shortages of their own, often linked to manufacturing issues but to increased demand as well. Over 27 different bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress and state legislation over the past year -- according to data from the National Academy for State Health Policy -- which allow Americans to buy their drugs from Canadian sources.

This evades the source of the problem and it exports the problem to a neighbour's vulnerable population, threatening them with a potential precarious position in drug availability. What kind of solution does that signify?  Canada ensures the regulation of drug prices through the federal Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, with its mandate to ensure that the cost of medications is "not excessive".

"We have got to do better in our country."
"People are where we need to be on it, regular folks. It’s our political leaders lack the courage to do the right thing."
John Kennedy, who travelled to Canada from Ohio

Lija Greenseid prepares to draw insulin at her home in St. Paul, Minn. Greenseid, whose daughter has Type 1 diabetes, is organizing a group trip to Canada to buy insulin at one-tenth the U.S. cost.  Photo: Jenn Ackeerman, The Washington Post