Could a Sick Bird Fly to Canada to Buy Insulin?

Three pharmaceutical companies are killing 100,000 American diabetics annually. Greed is their weapon of choice. Eli Lilly, (Indiana) Novo Nordisk, (New Jersey,) and Sanofi, (Paris France,) control 99 percent of the insulin marketplace. There is no generic competitor to offer an alternative, or drive down prices. Unlike other industries, where competition might lead to price reductions, this drug triad works in concert, raising prices together, without cause. People with little-to-no health insurance coverage have reported paying more than $1000 per month in the U.S. when higher insulin doses are required.

Add the history of insulin to this story of greed, and it becomes more diabolical. Canadian taxpayers bankrolled the research that led to the discovery of insulin. Canadian inventors, Frederick Banting, James Collip, and Charles Best, developed the lifesaving drug in 1923. They and their investors sold the patent to the University of Toronto for $1, yes, one dollar because they wanted it to be affordable to everyone. And it is everywhere except the U.S.

Americans die because they can’t afford insulin. Some decide to use half the prescribed product to make it last. They die too.

President Biden’s Build Back Better Act would have caped the price at $35. It didn’t pass. After negotiating and eliminating line items, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was passed. Biden negotiated with Republicans to cap monthly costs for insulin at $35, but only for Medicare patients. Everyone else will continue to pay exorbitant out-of-pocket prices. Thank the 43 members of congress who big Pharma paid for their votes.

Enter Elon Musk and his failure with Twitter. This week he took his threat to charge “verified accounts” for the check marks that identify them, the high-profile users. It is a tool that improves confusion over parody or stolen identities. Politicians, businesses, actors, authors, reports, anyone who, through some process, is proven to be who he claims to be, has a blue check.

Musk paid $40 billion for Twitter. It wasn’t all his money, and although his lack of a plan makes me wonder if he’s destroying Twitter on purpose. Who is this bad at business?

He determined that by charging the big shot blue check-mark people a monthly fee of $8, he’d recoup a couple of dollars. They all said they wouldn’t pay, they’d leave Twitter before they paid him a dime. So, the CEO of Tesla sold blue check-marks to anyone who had $8. This is how it went.

I’ll start with the Big-Pharma Eli Lilly.

The above tweet was created by a random person who paid $8 for a blue verification and did a great impersonation of the company’s account, as you can see from the response Tweet below. Two hours later: 👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼.

Eli Lilly apologizes, but like the rest of Big-Pharma, they don’t care how many people die because they can’t afford insulin. Their bottom line is the priority. They don’t offer lower prices to match what other countries pay, they just want you to know they didn’t post that Tweet. The man is Eli Lilly.

Eli Lilly executives raged after losing $20 billion in market capital initiated by Musk’s mismanagement of Twitter. Deep down, they must know karma came for them. Currently the markup on insulin is between 4,359% and 5,977%. They should be upset that their practice of killing people by price gouging has gotten national attention.