Sanders plans Canada trip for insulin

CHEAPER PRICES

TORONTO • American presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders said on Thursday that he would soon be coming to Canada with a group of diabetics to buy cheaper insulin.

The Vermont senator said in a tweet that he planned to make the trip toward the end of this month.

Typically, a vial of insulin Type 1 diabetics need to regulate their blood sugar costs about US$340 in the United States, roughly 10 times the price in Canada.

“We can’t wait for drug companies to lower prices,” Sanders tweeted on Thursday. “Americans need relief now!”

Sanders, who has long targeted pharmaceutical companies for the cost of prescription drugs, made a similar medication trip to Canada in 1999. He has accused the industry of being antithetical to the interests of the American public.

“In 1999, I took working-class women, struggling with breast cancer, to Canada to buy the same medication for 1/10th of the price they were paying in the U.S.,” Sanders tweeted.

According to CNN, Sanders and the diabetics will make the trip as part of his efforts to highlight the hardships some Americans face when it comes to drug purchases. The plan is to head to Windsor, Ont., from Detroit.

Late last month, a group of Type 1 diabetics from Minnesota crossed the border to buy insulin in London, Ont. One of the organizers, Quinn Nystrom, who was making her second such expedition, said insulin prices south of the border have skyrocketed in two decades.

“One in four Americans are rationing their insulin because they cannot afford it, so people are dying,” Nystrom, 33, said.