If you're not already angry about pharmaceutical prices, read about insulin

As reported in the Montana Standard:

A massive spike in insulin prices is causing a health crisis for millions of diabetes patients who depend on the lifesaving drug, doctors say. Now, after years of rapid increases having nothing to do with available supply and not matched elsewhere in the world, those in the U.S. insulin supply chain are blaming each other....

From 2011 to 2013 the wholesale price of insulin went up by as much as 62 percent. From 2013 to 2015 the price jumped again, from a low of 33 percent to as much as 107 percent...

"This borders on the unbelievable," Davidson said, citing an extremely concentrated insulin which "in 2001 had the wholesale price of $45. By last year, the cost had skyrocketed to $1,447" for the same monthly supply....

Pricing of insulin, as with other medications, is controlled by the manufacturers, the insurance companies, and pharmacy benefit managers — the middlemen who negotiate the prices that the insurance companies pay....

"We don't know what the benefit manager is paying for the insulin from the pharma company. It's backroom deals," Hirsch said. "You can call them rebates, you can call them kickbacks, you can call them bribes, but those are secret deals on which we don't have the details."...

"You may not be able to prove who's behind the price rigging, but remember these prices are not an issue in Canada or in Europe or other countries where the governments keep the drug makers from going wild. It's only in America."...Three pharmaceutical companies control almost all the world's supply of insulin. In addition to Eli Lilly, headquartered in Indianapolis, there is the Danish company Novo Nordisk, which says it makes half the insulin used by diabetics around the world, and the French company Sanofi, which says it has 18 percent of the market...

Lilly said it could not speculate on why individual costs went up. "Lilly does not set the final price a patient pays for our medicines. Wholesalers and pharmacies ultimately price the product at retail," said communication manager Julie Herrick Williams. "The patient's insurer, the type of plan, and the individual pharmacy all play a role in the price," she said. "Changes to the U.S. healthcare system are the primary driver for increased insulin cost for consumers. With the adoption of cost-sharing plans, like high-deductible health plans, more direct costs are shifting to the people who need treatments."

A single-payer system would eliminate many of these price-gouging practices.  Readers who are in favor of the current system (i.e. those who are healthy and/or wealthy) please chime in with your reasons for supporting it.

More at the link.  The Reddit discussion thread makes note of the advantages of traveling to Mexico to purchase meds.