Imagine getting diagnosed with a chronic illness. Imagine your child getting diagnosed with a chronic illness. Now imagine that nothing can cause this illness. It is simply an autoimmune disease that “just happens”. Next imagine there is no cure. But wait! There is a medicine for this incurable autoimmune disease that you didn’t cause or ask for, that enables you to live with the disease. If you don’t take this medicine, you will die. Simple choice, right? Take the medicine or die. Except the medicine is 6 or more shots a day, 5 or more finger pricks a day, and feeling awful if anything goes just out of normal. Not to mention that even if you do choose to take this medicine, every second of everyday you lead the risk of falling into a coma or worse, dying. Still though, an obvious choice, you’d take the medicine. But what if, you couldn’t afford the medicine? What if you couldn’t buy the “life saving” drug that your body needs to stay alive.
This is a reality for more than 1.25 Million households in the US (BeyondTypeOne.org) 1.25 million sisters, brothers, moms, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, scholars and cousins that live with this deafening question “how am I going to pay for my next insulin injection”
Type one Diabetes is an autoimmune disease that happens when the pancreas stops producing a hormone called insulin (jdrf.org). Insulin is a hormone that allows your body to use glucose (sugar) from carbohydrates as energy. It also keeps your blood sugar from getting dangerously high (resulting in diabetic ketoacidosis, or when your body produces high levels of blood acids. If not treated it can end in a coma or death) or dangerously low ( when your body doesn’t have enough glucose in its system resulting in seizures or comatose and eventually, death). Those without this hormone, have an unstable blood sugar, and are forced to inject their insulin manually as well as check their blood sugars multiple times a day.
So how much does it take for a type one diabetic to live? You wouldn’t think it should cost all that much, after all your child didn’t chose this disease. Two types of insulin are needed for a diabetic to control their blood sugars. The first a long lasting insulin that lasts 12-24 hours and a mealtime rapid acting insulin that is taken with every meal. For one 10ml vial of meal time or long lasting insulin it can cost you anywhere between $250.00 and $500.00. How long that one vial will last depends on the user due to the fact that every type one diabetic takes a different amount of insulin. Though, the vial will go bad in 30 days of opening. So you’ll have to buy a new one every month anyway.
Now those are just the vials. If you are like some diabetics, you use what we call a “pen” which is a dial up version of a vial that requires no extra syringe. These will run you about $550 dollars for a box of 5 (healthwarehouse.com)
Diabetics don’t only have to have insulin, there is a life saving device that is needed called a “glucagon”. This is an emergency shot of glucose in the event a diabetics blood sugar reaches dangerously low levels. This one time use device costs around $500.00.
Diabetics also have to test their blood sugar every time they eat, when they wake up, when they go to bed, and if they start to feel out of the ordinary. A blood glucose kit is an average of around $30-$50 and lasts as long as it doesn’t break. However, the test strips that go into this machine can cost you anywhere from $20 to $90 for just a box of 50 (healthwarehouse.com) Testing your sugar 4 times a day, and that is the minimum, you would run out of test strips in just 12 days.
It costs around $1,100 dollars a month for a diabetic household, and that’s if only one person is a type one. $13,080 a year you have to pay to keep your child alive, not to mention the hundreds of juice boxes used to treat lows, the hundreds of water bottles to give them when their blood sugar is too high and you have to tell them water is the only thing they can have if it makes them feel even worse. Is your daughter or sons life worth a pharmaceutical companies profit? Is your mother or father’s life worth it? Your sisters? Brothers? Is yours?
My life is not for profit. When insulin was founded , the three Canadian scientists (Frederick Banting, James Collip and Charles Best) sold the patent insulin for only $1 each, in hopes affordable insulin would be available to the public quickly. According to a report from P&S Market Research, by 2020 the global insulin market will top $48 billion.
Insulin isn’t a “luxury” it is a necessity. People are dying because they can’ t afford to pay for their medicine. They’re rationing it and causing their bodies to shut down. Tell me, how can you tell a 6 year old, that they can’t eat dinner because you don’t have enough medicine for them ? How can you sit there and watch a 14 year old girl pass out in class and go comatose because she couldn’t take her insulin this morning. How can you put a price tag on someone’s life? Insulin is not a luxury. Your life is not for profit. Your daughters life is not for profit. Your son’s life is not for profit. Your mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, and friends lives are not for profit. My life is not for profit.
Work Cited
Tsai, Allison. “The Rising Costs Of Insulin” Diabetes Forecast, March 2016, http://www.diabetesforecast.org/2016/mar-apr/rising-costs-insulin.html accesed Sep 2017
Ramsy, Lydia. “The prices for life-saving diabetes medications have increased again” 15, May 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/insulin-prices-increased-in-2017-2017-5 accesed Sep 2017.
JDRF http://www.jdrf.org/about/fact-sheets/type-1-diabetes-facts/
Beyond Type One App.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anonymous Student Author
Fall 2017
