Dying for insulin in the USA
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2019
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why do Americans have to pay so much for this life-saving drug? There are reports of some uninsured diabetics dying as a consequence. Even the health insurers and drug manufacturers say the pricing system is broken.
Manuela Saragosa speaks to Laura Marston, a type-1 diabetes sufferer and campaigner from Washington DC, about how she had to sell her house and leave her hometown just to get access to affordable insulin - and she says she is one of the lucky ones. Meanwhile the US Congress and various state law enforcement agencies are now looking into why the price of insulin is so many times higher in the US than in other developed countries.
So who is to blame? Robert Zirkelbach, executive vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, represents the drugs companies, while David Merritt, executive vice president of public affairs at America's Health Insurance Plans, represents the insurers.
(Photo: Insulin being produced at a factory in France; Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this is Business Daily from the BBC with me, Manuela Saragossa. |
| 0:05.6 | Coming up. |
| 0:06.2 | The games that drug companies play make even the biggest cynics blush. |
| 0:10.4 | We believe very strongly that patients are being asked to pay far too much. |
| 0:14.1 | We try to find out what's behind the ever-increasing cost of insulin in America. |
| 0:18.9 | I will pay you anything for insulin because I will die in a matter of a day or two without it. |
| 0:25.9 | That's coming up here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:32.1 | Pity America's diabetics. |
| 0:34.6 | The price of insulin there is among the highest in the world, so much so that it's costing lives. It's even been making the news. |
| 0:42.1 | The price of insulin, a life-saving drug for diabetics, tripled between 2002 and 2013. Since 2008, three top manufacturers raised the list price of insulin at least ten times. |
| 0:54.0 | His insulin costs were more than $1,000 a month. top manufacturers raised the list price of insulin at least 10 times. |
| 0:57.7 | His insulin costs were more than $1,000 a month. |
| 1:03.4 | He died of diabetic ketoacidosis because he couldn't afford the amount of insulin that he needed. And recently medical groups and others have raised concerns that many diabetics are in danger, |
| 1:08.7 | thanks to the rising price of insulin and an increasingly |
| 1:11.2 | common practice known as insulin rationing. |
| 1:15.2 | While Laura Marston lives in Washington, D.C., she's a 37-year-old lawyer who suffers from |
| 1:20.9 | type 1 diabetes. That means she was born with an inability to produce sufficient insulin. |
| 1:27.1 | She's reliant on administering a biosynthetic version to herself |
| 1:31.1 | to control her blood sugar levels and keep herself alive. |
| 1:35.0 | Laura knows well how in America, diabetes is an expensive illness. |
| 1:40.0 | I had to cash out my own retirement plan, pay penalties for that. I had to borrow money every |
| 1:48.6 | single month from my retired parents. I went into debt. I was on, you know, multiple payment |
... |
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