Just as a reminder, the doctors who discovered insulin, Frederick Banting and Charles Best, sold their patent for $1 because they felt it would be immoral to profit from such a lifesaving drug and wanted everyone to have it. Big Pharma then jacked up the price. #WorldDiabetesDay

There are only 3 insulin producers in the US—Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk. They make insulin in big industrial vats using genetically engineered yeast or E. Coli that reproduce exponentially. Yet insulin costs more than $300 per vial because of their price fixing monopoly.

More than 30 million Americans have diabetes. It causes blindness, heart disease, stroke, and damages blood vessels so badly that I’ve had to amputate patients’ legs who have gotten gangrene. It’s one of the most gruesome things to do as a doctor, and horrifying for the patient.

Some patients ration their own insulin just to survive which is beyond heartbreaking. The government should make insulin free for everyone but my hopes for that are low considering Secretary of Health Alex Azar was the VP of Eli Lilly who more than tripled the price of the drug.