Barbara Lawson lives in Hollis, Maine, with her 99 year old mother. A few years ago, she developed a rare auto-immune condition called scleroderma that causes joint pain, skin problems and other systems.

Between scleroderma treatments and high blood pressure medicines, Barbara’s prescriptions cost over $1,000 per month. Barbara’s Medicare insurance helps pay, but even with the insurance they are still expensive for a senior on a fixed income. And prices keep going up. Every year, drug corporations increase their prices on thousands of common medicines, forcing millions of people to choose between paying for medicines they need or paying for other essentials they need. Barbara worries that like many other Mainers, she could soon be among them.

Barbara doesn’t trust Big Pharma to put patients over their own profits. They have shown over and over again that they don’t care about saving lives–their priority is boosting their bottom line. It’s simply wrong to give drug corporations billions of our tax dollars to develop COVID vaccines with no strings attached and then let them charge us whatever they want for the medicine.

We’ve already paid for the vaccine–it should be provided at no cost rather than allowing drug corporations to charge us more to make a profit off the pandemic. COVID-19 is a wake up call for America that Big Pharma shouldn’t be setting prices. Congress and the President should do their jobs and guarantee that medicine is affordable for everyone.

Barbara is a proud member of the Maine People’s Alliance.