Caravan of American parents, patients seeking cheaper insulin to arrive in Canada this weekend

by Kelly Grant

Kristen Hoatson is planning to board a chartered bus in Minneapolis on Friday for a cross-border shopping excursion that she hopes will draw attention to a crisis in the United States.

Ms. Hoatson, whose 11-year-old son, Sam, has Type 1 diabetes, is part of a caravan of American parents and patients travelling to Canada this weekend to buy cheap insulin in London, Ont., the birthplace of a drug that keeps millions of people alive and well on both sides of border.

“I think it really should be a human right for insulin to be affordable,” Ms. Hoatson said, “and it’s just not affordable in the United States.”

Take the bill for Sam’s fast-acting insulin. In January of this year, Ms. Hoatson paid US$357.70 for five pen cartridges of NovoLog, a bill that would have been US$824.79 if not for the private insurance her husband has through his job as a software developer.

The same amount of the Canadian equivalent, NovoRapid, would have cost $61.23 in Canadian dollars before the pharmacy markup, according to the Ontario government’s online drug benefit list.

Insulin prices, which can be as much as 10 times higher in the United States than Canada, have become a flash point in the battle over skyrocketing prescription-drug prices in the United States.

Against that backdrop, some Americans are looking to Canada – both as a source of cheaper insulin for purchase and as an example of how Washington could tamp down exorbitant drug prices.

The average U.S. sticker price of insulin nearly tripled between 2003 and 2013, according to the American Diabetes Association. The Health Care Cost Institute, a research agency funded by four U.S. insurance companies, found a rapid increase in health spending by patients with Type 1 diabetes between 2012 and 2016, most of it driven by a doubling of the list price of insulin over that period.

Canada has a federal regulator, the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, which sets ceiling prices for brand-name drugs, and a federal-provincial-territorial alliance that negotiates discounted prices for branded and generic medicines.

Canada still has some of the highest list prices for prescription drugs in the world, and Diabetes Canada estimates that Type 1 diabetics in this country pay, on average, anywhere from $1,100 to $4,900 out of pocket annually for their insulin and supplies.

full story at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-caravan-of-american-parents-patients-seeking-cheaper-insulin-to/