Just how did insulin get so expensive?

Americans are making cross-border drug runs to treat their diabetes

A scale.
(Image credit: Illustrated | PORNCHAI SODA/iStock)

Lija Greenseid, "a rule-abiding Minnesota mom," as the Washington Post described her, is not the sort of person you'd expect to jump the border to buy drugs. But her daughter has Type 1 diabetes, and the cost of the insulin she needs has skyrocketed, roughly doubling in price just between 2012 and 2016, from $2,964 to $5,705. So Greenseid's organized a "caravan" of people to regularly drive into Canada — despite the possible illegality of the move — where they can buy the insulin they all need for a small fraction of the U.S. price.

How on earth did insulin become so expensive that Americans are forced to effectively do cross-border drug runs?

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.