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Fact check: President Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address
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Oil companies made $200 billion in midst of global energy crisis
Claim: “Big oil just reported its record profits. Last year they made $200 billion in the midst of a global energy crisis.”
Fact check: Seems to be true, although companies were not identified.
Details: Global oil companies have rebounded since the pandemic to post their highest ever profits since people started using petroleum. Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and Shell all reported record profits in 2022 — a year in which Russia’s war on Ukraine collided with the post-pandemic economic recovery to drive oil prices to their highest levels in history.
President Biden did not identify the oil companies by name, but according to press releases and financial reports released by major oil companies, their net profits, listed below, show profits totaling over $200 billion.
By Willie James Inman and Irina Ivanova
800,000 jobs in manufacturing created?
Claim: “We’ve already created — [with] your help — 800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth in 40 years.”
Fact check: True
Details: Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that in the manufacturing sector, there were approximately 12,196,000 manufacturing employees when President Biden took office in January 2021.
Preliminary data from the BLS says that there were approximately 12,999,000 manufacturing employees as of January 2023, which is around 800,000 higher.
The cost of insulin
Claim: “One in 10 Americans has diabetes. Many of you in this chamber do, and in the audience. But every day, millions need insulin to control their diabetes so they can literally stay alive. Insulin has been around for over 100 years. The guy who invented it didn’t even patent it because he wanted it to be available for everyone. It costs the drug companies, roughly, $10 a vial to make that insulin.”
Fact check: True
Details: According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Diabetes Statistics Report, “37.3 million Americans — about 1 in 10 — have diabetes.”
More precisely, as of June 2022, 11.3% of the U.S. adult population have diabetes. Some 28.7 million people across the country have been diagnosed with diabetes, while 8.5 million have gone undiagnosed with the disease.
Insulin, a hormone used to treat diabetes in certain patients, was first discovered over 100 years ago in 1922 and “marked a major breakthrough in medicine and therapy in patients with diabetes,” according to the National Institutes of Health.
And although there is no definitive data on the exact cost of producing a vial of the lifesaving treatment, several news articles reference a 2018 peer-reviewed article from BMJ Global Health that estimates the cost to be about $10 per vial, although some experts indicate it could be a bit higher. It is clear that insulin costs far less than what some drug companies have charged in the past.
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