OTTAWA (dpa-AFX) - Veteran senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused pharmaceutical companies of looting Americans with exorbitant price for insulin.
'Americans are dying because of the enormous greed of the pharmaceutical industry. We have got to end their greed,' he said after leading dozen type 1 diabetic patients into Canada to purchase insulin where it is available at a much cheaper rate.
In both the countries, a vial of insulin is manufactured at a cost of around $6. While it is sold for $32 in Canada, US drug dealers charge up to $340, more than ten times its value in the neighboring country.
Canada has a single-payer, government-backed health care system.
Sanders joined a group of people who took a bus from Detroit and crossed the border to the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario, in less than half an hour's journey to restock insulin.
'It is collusion, it is corruption and it is greed,' the Senator of Vermont said after the group bought insulin from Olde Walkerville Pharmacy in Windsor.
The longest-serving independent in congressional history has accused the pharmaceutical industry of spending billions lobbying Congressional lawmakers to keep drug prices high.
In an interview with CNN later, Sanders said that three insulin manufacturers control 90 percent of the US insulin market.
He accused that together, they made a profit of $14.5 billion last year, and year after year, they raise the price of insulin at the same levels.
'The profits the drug companies are making, ripping off the American people is scandalous, it is outrageous and it has got to end,' according to him.
He vowed that if elected President, he will appoint an Attorney General 'who will enforce our antitrust laws, and executives caught engaging in price-fixing will go to jail.'
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