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As price of insulin soars, Americans caravan to Canada for lifesaving medicine
The Americas
As price of insulin soars, Americans caravan to Canada for lifesaving medicine
By Emily Rauhala
June 16 at 2:52 PM
As their minivan rolled north, they felt their nerves kick in — but they kept on driving. ... At the wheel: Lija Greenseid, a rule-abiding Minnesota mom steering her Mazda5 on a cross-border drug run.
Her daughter, who is 13, has Type 1 diabetes and needs insulin. In the United States, it can cost hundreds of dollars per vial. In Canada, you can buy it without a prescription for a tenth of that price.
So, Greenseid led a small caravan last month to the town of Fort Frances, Ontario, where she and five other Americans paid about $1,200 for drugs that would have cost them $12,000 in the United States.
“It felt like we were robbing the pharmacy,” said Quinn Nystrom, a Type 1 diabetic who joined the caravan that day. “It had been years since I had 10 vials in my hands.”
....
Emily Rauhala writes about foreign affairs, with a focus on Canada, for The Washington Post. She spent a decade as an editor and correspondent in Asia, first for Time magazine and later, from 2015 to 2018, as China correspondent in Beijing for The Post. In 2017, she shared an Overseas Press Club award for a series about the Internet in China. Follow https://twitter.com/emilyrauhala
As price of insulin soars, Americans caravan to Canada for lifesaving medicine
By Emily Rauhala
June 16 at 2:52 PM
As their minivan rolled north, they felt their nerves kick in — but they kept on driving. ... At the wheel: Lija Greenseid, a rule-abiding Minnesota mom steering her Mazda5 on a cross-border drug run.
Her daughter, who is 13, has Type 1 diabetes and needs insulin. In the United States, it can cost hundreds of dollars per vial. In Canada, you can buy it without a prescription for a tenth of that price.
So, Greenseid led a small caravan last month to the town of Fort Frances, Ontario, where she and five other Americans paid about $1,200 for drugs that would have cost them $12,000 in the United States.
“It felt like we were robbing the pharmacy,” said Quinn Nystrom, a Type 1 diabetic who joined the caravan that day. “It had been years since I had 10 vials in my hands.”
....
Emily Rauhala writes about foreign affairs, with a focus on Canada, for The Washington Post. She spent a decade as an editor and correspondent in Asia, first for Time magazine and later, from 2015 to 2018, as China correspondent in Beijing for The Post. In 2017, she shared an Overseas Press Club award for a series about the Internet in China. Follow https://twitter.com/emilyrauhala
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