The Cost of Living: Why US Prescription Drug Prices Are so High<br /><br />Fault Lines investigates what's behind the skyrocketing price of prescription medication in the US and the human cost.<br /><br />In the United States, many people have to choose between financial insecurity or saving their own lives.<br />The cost of nearly every major brand name drug is on the rise and as a result, millions of Americans are having trouble paying for their prescription medication.<br /><br />This includes Type 1 diabetics, for whom insulin is a life-saving drug.<br /><br />"For somebody like me, it's like the oxygen you breathe. It is like the oxygen you and I breathe, except for me, I have to pay $340 a vial for that oxygen," says Quinn Nystrom, from T1International, a global advocacy organisation for diabetics. Nystrom is one of at least 1.2 million Americans with Type 1 diabetes, an auto-immune disease that has no cure.<br /><br />Between 2012 and 2016 alone, the price of insulin nearly doubled, forcing many Americans to search for other routes to access it.<br /><br />We follow a caravan of Type 1 diabetics as they cross the border into Canada, where insulin is about one-tenth of the cost of the drug in the US.<br /><br />"It's not just a bunch of people whining and crying about the price of insulin. There is a true impact," says Nicole Smith-Holt, whose son died less than a month after ageing off her health insurance, because, she believes, he could not afford to pay for his insulin and started rationing the drug. "My family was destroyed by this. I lost my child. I will never have my son back ... Ultimately, the system failed Alec."<br /><br />We made multiple interview requests to the top three insulin manufacturers, but none of them agreed to an interview. Sanofi sent a statement and included a congressional testimony by its External Affairs Executive Vice president.<br /><br />We also meet Jackie Trapp who has a rare form of blood cancer called Multiple Myeloma, which doesn't respond to traditional cancer treatments. Instead, she has to take a speciality drug to keep her cancer stable. Despite having insurance and taking advantage of multiple assistance programmes this vital drug costs her between $15,000 and $22,000 a year.<br /><br />"Drugs don't work if we can't afford to take them," Trapp says.<br /><br />Fault Lines investigates what's behind the skyrocketing costs of prescription medication, and how the hefty price tag is costing lives.
