# Insulin purchases in Costa Rica

**URL:** <https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/insulin-purchases-in-costa-rica/1748>\
**Category:** Insulin\
**Tags:** insulin\
**Created:** [August 28, 2017, 5:10am UTC](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/insulin-purchases-in-costa-rica/1748 "2017-08-28T05:10:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![MaryPat](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/forum.fudiabetes.org/marypat/32/985_2.png) [@MaryPat](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/u/MaryPat)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 5:10am UTC](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/insulin-purchases-in-costa-rica/1748/1 "2017-08-28T05:10:16Z")

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@Michel is asking about [purchasing insulin in Canada](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/purchasing-insulin-in-canada-in-person/1747/). I don’t have answers there, but I recently went to Costa Rica with my son, and checked out a few pharmacies to see about insulin purchases. What I found out:

- the government (some socialized medicine system?) distributes insulin for free to all diabetics, so no local buys insulin from the pharmacy is what I understood (but my Spanish is a bit shaky).

- You do not need a prescription to buy insulin in a pharmacy

- Insulin prices are cheaper than in the US. I bought a couple of Lantus pens and a couple of Apidra pens for $25 per.

If you multiply the price by 15 (for us a normal amount for 3 months), that would be $750 per 3 months for both basal and bolus insulin, a bit more than 1/3 the price in the US if you were to pay out of pocket I think.

But it appears to be a lot more expensive than in Canada, since @Michel was writing a couple of  
months ago that someone had reported buying a vial of Novolog for less than $US 20

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**Author:** ![Kaelan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/flex030/user_avatar/forum.fudiabetes.org/kaelan/32/989_2.png) [@Kaelan](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/u/Kaelan)\
**Post date:** [August 28, 2017, 11:41pm UTC](https://forum.fudiabetes.org/t/insulin-purchases-in-costa-rica/1748/2 "2017-08-28T23:41:31Z")

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> [@MaryPat](#):
>
> no local buys insulin from the pharmacy

In fact, we went to one pharmacy in Samara that had no insulin at all.