In a period of 6 weeks you get 3 bills for the one drug that may extend your life and its looking like its going to be you know over 12000. 00 a month. I can honestly tell you that when i was diagnosed you know there are some tears there but i cried hard more when these bills came along ive spent so much more Emotional Energy on finding ways to fund my treatment than i ever have my cancer. At 1st jackies insurance didnt cover revlimid has been saying well we can do this ill sell my truck you know what that old bell give us the money but im going to be on this indefinitely this is not a solution we need a longer Term Solution and were not going to be paying this out of pocket it will be bankrupt before you know it and then what. So jackie spent up to 50 hours a week at times cobbling together a plan to bring down her cost this is my part d. This is my supplemental policy these are different and you know when i was involved in marketplace insurance if you want to live in this is the amount of paperwork required oh yeah its pretty complicated ive been lucky ive been ahead of the game ive been able to navigate pretty effectively through the system others are not. Just trying to wrap my head around how you can afford this drug you have multiple insurance plans youre on medicare you have found a loophole in the new state law thats helped you youre in disability and you wanted to Scale Program with all of that what do you how much that cost you or youre still in any given year its anywhere from 15. 00 to 22000. 00 for me out of pocket 15 to 22000 a year thats after insurance and thats out of your thats out of your pocket out of my pocket. One of the most effective ways to bring down the cost of medicine for people like jackie is to have more affordable generic options on the market. But experts say that Major Pharmaceutical Companies use a complex web of strategies to block generic competition. So they can maintain control of the trucks price and protect a monopoly. A company that has a monopoly goes to its potential competition and says hey weve got a better deal for both of us well give you x. Dollars to just keep your product off the market. So the Patent Holder benefits from getting preserve their monopoly and their monopoly pricing. The generic firm benefits by getting an insured payday and the public loses because we dont get more affordable medicine through competition this strategy the drug Companies Use to keep competitors out of the market is legal. And its not the only one. The way the farms of companies today use the patent system they stack of hundreds of patents on a particular drug such that they basically get as low as they can out of that protective protection in order to prevent competition coming in and we all know whats competition comes in prices drop. How does the patent process affect a drug like rabbit i think there are some 107 patents on this drug for passing up occasions in the 1st 70 of the granted and that prevents anybody from coming in if im a generic competitor i have to mitigate my way through all these to get into the marketplace and so delays so instead of going to the market maybe you know next you have to wait 23 is because of the way the regulatory system works in terms of you have to end the litigation for you can get approval fusion eric. Industry experts told us that strategies like these have slipped back to her competition of prescription drugs by years. Celgene which mean you actually read limited did not respond to a list of questions we sent them. Imo for making a healthy profit and protecting intellectual property for a period of time but theyve abused that it doesnt matter how many great new innovations there are and great new drugs there are that are going to keep people alive he can for them drugs dont work if if we can afford to take and. This is a total rip off. And we are ending. And we will work every day to ensure all americans have access to the quality affordable medication they need and they deserve and we will not rest until this. Of unfair pricing is a total victory for the usa. President promised to make the high cost of prescription drugs a top policy priority. Hes talked about bringing down the cost of some drugs in line with their prices in other countries. But experts we spoke to say his proposals dont address the root of the problem. The Drug Companies monopoly power which according to a survey by more than 70 percent of americans want to rein it. In you look at the polling with the people you say theres political will at the electorate level for radical change on this issue. But theres a disconnect between the political will of the people and that actual political will and congress. Lies or disconnect their money. The industry has extreme lobbying power about 3 lobbyists for every member of congress and spends a great deal on elections on supporting candidates in the United States. When the pharmaceutical industry says we need more incentives to conduct a certain line of research and no one wants to stand in the way of that so the legal climate continues to favor the industry more and more which means they can abuse all of us in the form of price with unchecked power. Federal filings show that pharma the group that represents most of the us is largest drug manufacturers spend about 27. 00 and a half 1000000. 00 on lobbying in 2018. When theyre asked about the high cost of prescription drugs the pharmaceutical industry often makes this argument. Lowering drug prices which type of research and development that impact the creation of new lifesaving drugs this is obviously extremely important to sustain a wave of innovation that Patrick Obrian who works for a probusiness lobbying group is sympathetic to this few patients on this is in new ways ive talked to so many people in this industry that says theres an entire set of strategies for extending patents the Drug Companies are using well this is all there you see this is all part of a. Process of attempting to stigmatize an industry that. Has delivered tremendous value to people everywhere and it is unfortunate it is part of a bigger at those the state can hold that big business is bad but you have americans flooding over the border to buy prescription drugs in canada but how do you explain that to wrap your head around that say yep this is this is a system that we were well you could say that other countries are getting away with murder and i wouldnt disagree they are not paying their fair share for the overall system the political situation of those countries has created a situation where the manufacturers have no Pricing Power this is them that we have works pretty well to create the right incentive for investment and also to allow following innovation and if you know the high prices on the front under part of that well thats part of the process in a free market a producer has the right to set their price. Buyers can take it or leave it but if theres only one drug to treat your illness and that company is the only one that makes and sells that drug there is no market of choice and you have to take that drugs or die i dont think its any given companys fault that theres a lack of competition you know the fact is that if someone else can figure out a better way to do that they could knock. Medicine off the market and notes im wrong fact we see that all the time. The only counterargument you can make is that prices should be high in order to Fund Innovation but theres no limit to that argument i mean under under that logic companies can literally charge anything they want and it would always be a good deal for the public which is whats happening and its not a good deal for the public. Medical innovation is expensive and we need to pay for it that doesnt mean prices should be whatever the Companies Want them to be which is the current regime. We made multiple interview requests to the top 3 insulin manufacturers see if we get a referee literally on the phone. But none of them agreed to an interview. To get someone from to go door to speak on camera. All right so would. You know if youve seen a fee responded with a statement explaining the various discount programs they offer to patients and encourage them to call the companys hotline for information. We decided to approach someone else who might know more. Secretary aleksei czar has been the face of the trump administrations truck price policy. But he has another connection to the us. Americans want in these surveys all of the home here say he was a Top Executive at insulin manufacturer eli lilly and during this time there the price of the companys best selling insulin more than doubled. We wanted to ask him why secretaries are. Which tells us one question about description prices insulin doubled when you were president that he will usa. Why did you do something about it been. One of the. Sectors i know you can hear me i know that you when you were president it will usa insulin prices doubled why didnt you do something about it the. President from said Pharmacy Companies are getting away with murder was he referring to Companies Like you would present itself. Its corruption and its Legal Companies are free to do most of what were talking about here today they can pay to delay their competition they can extend monopolies for years or even decades they can spike prices by 5000 percent if they want to making medicines affordable is not a question of cracking down on illegal behavior its a question of cracking down on legalized corruption in the system that we have created. Alice death is not an isolated situation since alec has passed away i have been in contact with at least 10 other families who had recently lost one of their loved ones from the same thing and ironically half of them are 26 year old. Firm is it a company is need to lower the list prices people are dying and the only way to stop that from happening is to make the products affordable. So are really fixed so just like jackie is now 4 years into a 5 year prognosis with the help of revlimid. But to make it this far she and her husband it had to train their savings and some of the money that set aside for retirement. Theyre now selling pieces of their life on line like furniture and dishes they were given for their wedding. My husband and i both have been incredibly careful people. Very conservative with our money. We were the kind of people that whatever the maximum was that we could put away for retirement we did all that interest posed to do we did all the things were supposed to do absolutely you know we generally had anywhere from 40. 00 to 50000. 00 in the bank just as a safety net thats gone. Thats long gone. Were not going to be that 75 year old couple with the 50 Year Anniversary parties its not really in the cards for us and weve dealt with that but i dont want to leave him completely broken and completely bankrupt at the same time and. Unless something changes. Thats likely to be the case. Unless i decide. To no longer seek treatment youre literally saying that you have to make a financial trail i will on how long to live i will there will be a Tipping Point and i will have to make a decision as to when to stop treatment and choose to die. So that i can leave my husband with enough so that he can he can make it through the next you know 30 years of his life thats whats at stake for me. J. O. You are at the mercy of the state but in the land of the free shareholders have a stake it is this profit motive that continues to interfere with Adequate Health care being provided to people who are detained and incarcerated across the country salt lines investigates how the outsourcing of health care in american jails is impacting the lives and deaths of those behind bars sick inside on aljazeera. The multitudes the magnet for tourists from around the globe but behind the peach Risk Landscape young men are leaving to die with groups in syria when i went east investigates on al jazeera. And this is different its whether someone thing for some of his favorites doesnt mean i think its how you proceed official and if it is a settlement doing it qantas 5 innings its a story in fire out. A policy imposed decades ago. Goods and boards changing demographics across asia with far reaching consequences are pretty leading poor of socially disadvantaged young men so you have the system where people at every level will be get being given body money to agree to star as a ship or buddy to get other people to move. Aljazeera examines the politics of population control. At least 17 people are killed by a car bomb that may have hysteria tekkie border. Crowd and i missed the attain this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up antigovernment protesters blocked roads leading to iraqs main port raising concerns that Food Supplies could be disrupted. Tear gas canisters a fire as the 22nd weekend of protests in hong kong descends into chaos. And britains government halts all fracking but for how long. A car bomb has exploded at a market in the syrian town of not far from the border at least that 10 people have been killed more than 20 injured as one of 2 major towns that have been the initial focus of chuckies cross border operation to capture territory from kodesh y. P. Chief and it regards as terrorists how correspondent has moved from shania near the tekkie syrian border. The car was packed with explosives and placed in a crowded market of this explains the growing number of casualties the Turkish Military blamed the white b. G. For the attack and the. Head back saying that this is a failure of the turkish government saying that these are lie the said they failed to provide security for people in. And this is the latest blast in a series of attacks that took place in different cities on the border with turkey. 3 in tel aviv and also it is clearly an indication of the enormous challenge that faces turkey as its tossed the joint patrols in the saves to ensure that the city of fighters have completely weakly treated its also a huge challenge for the so your opposition which finds itself with a New Territory from. And which is now under obligation to secure it and the potential for confrontation between the turkish army and the f. D. A. Is bigger than any time before now one passenger has been killed and at least 90 others injured during protests in baghdad on friday people took to the streets in the capital than any day since the downfall of Saddam Hussein they are being driven by anger at corruption lack of Public Services and unemployment 250 people have been killed in the past month protests have also started up again and baz euro and attaching a name has. Now in the city of basra it looks like their protests are blocking operations of critical utilities local sources are telling us that protesters and Security Forces in basra have been fighting in front of the room the haas airport since last evening there was a city in there and what we understand protesters had been blocking the entrance and hold the operations for them to the port for about 6 days Security Forces came in cleared the sit in and thats when local sources told us about 100 people were injured some of them seriously protesters remain there carrying signs that say iran out of iraq you affairs another one a sign being seen is. The Iraqi Government made by iran protesters are upset they say that the ports revenue is being diverted away from their city and leaving them with poor basic services hundreds of people have gathered in the gaza strip for the funeral of a palestinian man killed by an israeli airstrike. Died in the early hours of saturday morning after israel launched strikes into gaza the military said it was targeting science and to hamas the group that controls the territory israel says 10 rockets were fired from gaza late on friday night while yemeni protest as i back out and tie is the 2nd largest city demanding that government figures suspected of embezzlement be sacked the war has pushed millions to the brink of famine and demonstrators say thats being made west by corruption a saudi Led Military Coalition intervened in 2015 to support the yemeni governments fight against the rebels triggering what the u. N. Describes as the wild west humanitarian disaster. Meanwhile antigovernment demonstrations in lebanon are calming down on friday banks opened for the 1st time in 2 weeks but there are some restrictions on foreign currency transactions schools and universities also reopen to their doors while the commander in chief of a wrong influential revolutionary guards has made a veiled reference to those protests in lebanon Major General hussein salami seemed to hit back at criticism over irans influence in iraq and lebanon you know if. Iran does not have an eye on any country we will extend our power to the point that if any enemy wants to use a location to attack iran we will destroy that location so our reaches beyond our own borders meaning that we will extend our area of power to anywhere our enemy intends to plot against us we have achieved this power. Our correspondent also jabari is in terror on with more details. Major general hussein is how i mean rated irans position that they will continue to defend their interests in the middle east he said that iran will not shy away from protecting its interests in the neighboring countries hinting at the fact that the events that have been unfolding in syria lebanon and iraq is something that has been instigated by foreign powers mainly to United States and iran will not stand for it that they will defend their own interests in those countries the Major General also announced that iran has now got more than enough missiles in its stockpile to defend its interests anywhere in the region and that they are ready and able and willing to defend themselves the events that he was speaking at is the upcoming 40th anniversary of the u. S. Embassy takeover by University Students on november 4th 1979 which led