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Diabetes Patients Are Losing Limbs And Sight Because They Can’t Afford Insulin
https://consumerist.com/2016/08/23/diabetes-patients-are-losing-limbs-and-sight-because-they-cant-afford-insulin/Earlier this week, we shared the concerns of patients who are struggling with the rising cost of EpiPens, injection devices that can save lives in the case of a severe allergic reaction to foods or other substances. The important thing about EpiPens, though, is that patients hope to never actually need to use them. Another drug with significant recent price increases, insulin, has to be taken every day… when patients can afford it.
Insulin is another injectable drug based on a human hormone, but it’s one that patients take every day. Well, they’re supposed to take it every day, which is kind of the problem. Affording different forms of insulin has become so difficult that patients are stretching out containers, which can cost hundreds of dollars for customers without insurance or who have a high deductible....
A medical professor who has tracked the cost of insulin over the years says that a one-month supply of a popular version that cost $45 wholesale in 2001 cost $1,447 14 years later, an increase of almost 3,000%. That’s the wholesale price, not the retail price that an uninsured patient would pay.
“These patients are desperate,” a pharmacist and diabetes educator in Texas explained. “They do without their insulin, skip doses, lower their prescribed dose to stretch out the insulin they have, and end up in the emergency room or ICU with long-term complications such as kidney failure, leg amputations or vision problems.”
Insulin is another injectable drug based on a human hormone, but it’s one that patients take every day. Well, they’re supposed to take it every day, which is kind of the problem. Affording different forms of insulin has become so difficult that patients are stretching out containers, which can cost hundreds of dollars for customers without insurance or who have a high deductible....
A medical professor who has tracked the cost of insulin over the years says that a one-month supply of a popular version that cost $45 wholesale in 2001 cost $1,447 14 years later, an increase of almost 3,000%. That’s the wholesale price, not the retail price that an uninsured patient would pay.
“These patients are desperate,” a pharmacist and diabetes educator in Texas explained. “They do without their insulin, skip doses, lower their prescribed dose to stretch out the insulin they have, and end up in the emergency room or ICU with long-term complications such as kidney failure, leg amputations or vision problems.”
33 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
I understand that you feel bad about supporting a company that causes harm, but you just don't have a viable alternative. There's no sense beating yourself up about it.
So many drug prices are at the breaking point now. We need government intervention. "Consumers" (who should really be called "patients"
cannot solve this problem alone.
have his bumper sticker on my car.
