On a December day back in 2019, a charter bus rolled into the parking lot of a certain large retail store on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.
The West Virginia passengers unfolded themselves from their seats and walked directly to the pharmacy counter of the chain, well-known in both the U.S. and Canada.
That was so they could purchase their life-saving insulin without a prescription.
And at about one-tenth of what they would pay back home.
One of the leaders and organizers of the journey was former state delegate Barbara Evans Fleischauer of Morgantown, who had long made pursuits of patient rights — plus affordable costs for their medications — as a platform of her work in public life.
Now, a state watchdog group that does the same is honoring her with its highest award for outreach and advocacy.
West Virginians for Affordable Health Care will present Fleischauer with its Rockefeller Award in May in Charleston. The ceremony will be 5:30 p.m. May 16 at the Women’s Club in the state’s capital city.
The organization calls it a “lifetime” award.
“Barbara Fleischauer served in the West Virginia House of Delegates for over 20 years,” the organization said in a release.
“She sponsored and passed important legislation,” the release said further, “protecting the rights of women and children, expanding health care, advancing civil rights, and improving benefits for veterans and disabled Mountaineers.”
That includes her campaign to cap insulin costs, while increasing access to medical care across West Virginia.
As a delegate, she also successfully lobbied for increased funding and insurance coverage for children on the Autism spectrum, while helping to create the state Office of Oral Health.
The trip north brought it all home for her, she said, after that bus was back in West Virginia.
“It’s really shocking how much some people, especially Type 1 diabetics, are having to pay for their life-saving medicine,” the then-lawmaker said.
“I do not use the word ‘shocking’ often,” she continued, “but hearing these personal stories has really affected me.”
These days, Fleischauer lobbies for equal rights and abortion rights for women through with the Feminist Majority, the national organization that hired her this past January.
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