Laura has given up a lot to afford insulin.

Laura Marston, Washington, DC

When Americans are dying because we can’t afford a naturally occurring hormone like insulin, which has been used to treat diabetes for 100 years, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.

I’m Laura Marston, 38, from Washington, DC. I was diagnosed with insulin-dependent, Type 1 diabetes my second month of high school at age 14. I have been on the same insulin (Humalog) since my diagnosis year (1996), during which time the price-per-vial has gone from $21 to $275, and the insulin has remained wholly unchanged. Not even the packaging has changed.

In order to obtain the insulin I need to stay alive, I’ve given up a lot: my 7 year-old dog, who I rescued at 10 weeks; hopes of ever buying a house or having children; my dream of owning my own business; I’ve sold my car and all my possessions multiple times. I’ve cashed out my 401(k), run up credit card debt, been on multiple payment plans, and borrowed money from my parents’ retirement savings to pay for insulin. My grandfather passed away and my entire inheritance (1/4 of everything my 97-year-old grandfather owned) is in a bank account reserved to cover insulin price increases. I hoard insulin vials in the fridge of my small apartment to try to insulate myself from the twice-a-year price increases. In the past, I’ve used expired insulin and limited my food intake (though already underweight) to conserve/ration insulin. I’ve lived off free insulin samples from my doctor.

Over the past 24 years with Type 1 diabetes, I’ve gotten used to needles, pricks and injections (over 25,000 to date!) but I will never get used to being price-gouged in order to stay alive. During that same time period, Eli Lilly’s annual revenues for my insulin alone have skyrocketed from $129.6 million to $2.991 billion, the price for one vial of Humalog insulin increased from $21 to $275, and Eli Lilly’s share price soared from $31 to over $200.

Patient advocates like myself have collectively raised our voices to establish insulin price gouging as the poster child for outrageous drug prices. Our representatives in Congress are holding hearings, conducting investigations into, and expressing outrage over insulin price gouging. But Americans continue to die because Congress refuses to act. When Americans are dying because we can’t afford a naturally occurring hormone like insulin, which has been used to treat diabetes for 100 years, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. I’m calling on all advocates to pressure their members of Congress to work in bipartisan fashion to:

Pass Insulin price cap legislation.
- The price to manufacture one vial of Humalog insulin is estimated at around $5. Even allowing for a 400% markup, a vial should cost no more than $25. Every other developed country in the world places caps on what insulin makers can charge patients or government health systems. The American Congress must do the same.
- A lot of talk about the “free market” bringing insulin prices down – There’s no free market when the choice is buy or die. I will pay any price for insulin because I die quickly and painfully without it. Without federal price regulation, insulin makers like Lilly are free to charge “what the market will bear,” which, in the case of insulin, is “everything we have.”
Provide government-manufactured insulin
- Cut out the profit margins and provide insulin at cost to American patients
Put pressure on the FTC and DOJ to enforce existing price fixing and antitrust laws against the Insulin Oligopoly.
Stop taking money from insulin makers Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi.
- That money is from my no-longer-existent retirement account, that money is money I’ve earned that’s been taken from me for the “privilege” to live another day. Stop using it to fund your campaigns. Stop falling for the PhRMA lobbying routine. The 7 million Americans who rely on insulin to live will hold you accountable, we will not stop raising our voices until we no longer have to choose, “our money or our lives.”