By Stephanie Aines | Director of Organizing and Training
Insulin prices continue to be a crisis, and young Americans are continuing to die because they cannot afford this essential and life-saving medication. We are angry, and have organized many actions this fall to fight back.
We went back to Sanofi offices in Cambridge, MA with gravestone of 4 more young people who died from rationing their insulin this summer. Mishy, who is 30 and has lived with Type 1 diabetes since she was a young child, gave a speechgave a speech. She talked about how insulin and related supplies have shaped her life, and her anger over struggling to afford the medication and supplies that kept her alive:
"Like many Type 1 diabetes, which I am capable, I've shared my surplus of insulin with others who need it. This practice is illegal. But overcharging people to death is not. Sanofi and their ilk have our blood on their hands," she declared.
The group sang a new version of "This Land is Your Land" called "Pharma Don't Care For You and Me." Here's a snippet of one of the verses:
I'm diabetc,
I need in-su-lin
But my insurance
is in a tailspin.
I lost my job and
pay out of pocket.
Pharma don't care for you and me.
Activists in Gainesville, FL organized a vigil on Friday, November 1st to honor and remember the people who have died because they could not afford their insulin. Everybody in the audience held a candle, and a local priest led the participants in prayer.
Our more academic activists have been leading study groups, intellectual and comfortable conversations to teach and learn from each other about different aspects of the health care system. Members are better able to understand how the American health care system currently works, imagine what sort of world we can create, and what a future system can look like. The study group in Washington, DC have been discussing hospital prices and surprise medical bills, while the group in New York City recently met to compare the United States with single payer systems around the world.
Over the winter we'll be strategizing around our next targets and goals, and training on the skills we'll need to get us there. Stay tuned!
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
