Maine Compass: Celebrate veterans this Fourth of July by lowering drug prices
Pharmaceutical price-gouging hurts all Americans, including those who have served our country, writes a veteran from Oakland.
By Alicia Barnes
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Imagine this: You go to the pharmacy to pick up some things you need, like Prilosec for heartburn, a bottle of vitamin D, some iron and B12 pills, Breathe Right nose strips, and, from the pharmacy, sertraline for anxiety. Put together, over the year, your trips to the drug store are costing you between $504 and $720 per year.
That might not seem like a lot. But imagine if, like an estimated 119,000 Mainers, you have diabetes. In 2019, just a vial of insulin in the U.S. cost $332, and in 2017, a 26-year-old Minnesota man died because he couldn’t afford to pay the $1,300 his monthly supply of insulin would have cost.