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Woman says her son couldn't afford his insulin – now he's dead

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Re: Woman says her son couldn't afford his insulin – now he's dead

#31

Post by masonic »

heyjudy wrote: post #22

Uncontrolled type-2 diabetes is no joke. I had a Danish neighbor growing up who worked for Spectra-Physics and had an RX-7 (Wankel) back in the day. After he retired, he got diabetes but didn't take insulin with uncontrolled blood sugar over 400-700 mg/dL. He lost his vision, feet and went from mildly unhealthy to dead under in two years. He was never obese that I recall. If someone were broke as in the story, but de…

Type 2 is non-insulin-dependent.

Metformin is an excellent drug for NIDDM and is ridiculously cheap even in the USA (less than $3/month at Costco uninsured price).

Re: Woman says her son couldn't afford his insulin – now he's dead

#32

Post by masonic »

diogenescynic wrote: post #8

Blame republicans. This is all by their design. Every other country has figured this out and the conservatives in those countries mostly support universal healthcare. America needs to vote out republicans for a generation and get America caught up to the rest of the developed world.

Obamacare rules are still in full effect in MN.

Re: Woman says her son couldn't afford his insulin – now he's dead

#34

Post by beatgammit »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #18
NicoJuicy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's a startup problem, but more like a government problem

Indeed. The world needs less founders and more civic minded political candidates. No startup is going to fix a nation’s dysfunctional healthcare system.

Why not? There's research into cutting costs in producing insulin as well as fixing diabetes. The government will "solve" the problem by socializing the cost of treatment, whereas a startup may seem a cure or a cheaper treatment.

Innovation is definitely higher risk, higher reward. I guess you need to decide whether you want better treatment access now or a potential cure later (with the caveat that more could suffer now). I know I prefer to support seeking cures over funding treatments even if that means more people will suffer now. Thus, I think we need more founders, not more policy.

Also, it seems that many forms of diabetes can be reversed by fixing diet. If a founder can help people fix their diet, demand would drop, which should drop prices due to oversupply and make funding treatments cheaper (e.g. for type 1 diabetes where no cure is likely, aside from potential improvements in transplants).

Re: Woman says her son couldn't afford his insulin – now he's dead

#35

Post by beatgammit »

ng12 wrote: post #4
methodover wrote: post #2

This story is absolutely heartbreaking. This young man died alone, trying to ration his $1300/mo insulin. Does anyone know if there are startups trying to tackle this specific problem? I would be curious about learning more about them. I don't understand why a company doesn't just come in and massively undercut the competition.

Patents. There is generic insulin available (Walmart sells it for $25/vial) but it's not the fancy stuff. It works much slower than the insulin most people take but not slow enough to replace long-lasting insulin.

This is the problem with most pharmaceuticals.

I believe we should cut patent duration to somewhere in the 5 year range. A patent should only be in force long enough to recoup R&D investment, and I think our current patent system is way beyond that.

Instead of healthcare reform, we should be pushing for patent reform. Reduced pharmaceutical prices would make healthcare reform much less expensive, and thus easier to sell.

Re: Woman says her son couldn't afford his insulin – now he's dead

#36

Post by beatgammit »

diogenescynic wrote: post #8

Blame republicans. This is all by their design. Every other country has figured this out and the conservatives in those countries mostly support universal healthcare. America needs to vote out republicans for a generation and get America caught up to the rest of the developed world.

No, blame IP law. Patents were intended to increase innovation and competition, but lobbyists have been able to extend IP protections to make a killing. Few candidates from either major party seriously promote patent reform.

We could socialize the cost of medication, but that doesn't solve the underlying problem of high pharmaceutical costs. I suppose you could argue that government would force prices down, but we got into this position from lobbyists, so why would government all of a sudden stop listening to lobbyists once they have captive insurance customers?

I think the best approach is to table universal healthcare for now (Republicans won't budge and Democrats have utterly failed) and focus on fixing patents and other things that result in high healthcare prices. Once the underlying problems have been resolved, we can revisit universal healthcare if it's still important.

I'd much rather see us go the UBI route where people choose their own benefits than having government try to decide what minimum benefits everyone needs.

Re: Woman says her son couldn't afford his insulin – now he's dead

#37

Post by ng12 »

beatgammit wrote: post #35
ng12 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patents. There is generic insulin available (Walmart sells it for $25/vial) but it's not the fancy stuff. It works much slower than the insulin most people take but not slow enough to replace long-lasting insulin.

This is the problem with most pharmaceuticals. I believe we should cut patent duration to somewhere in the 5 year range. A patent should only be in force long enough to recoup R&D investment, and I think our current patent system is way beyond that. Instead of healthcare reform, we should be pushing for patent reform. Reduced pharmaceutical prices would make healthcare reform much less expensive, and thus easier to s…

Specifically with insulin the problem is evergreening. The big companies make small, incremental improvements to the brand-name drug which allows them to extend their patent. This makes sense when the improvements are significant, but there needs to be some lower-bound to how different the drugs can be before a patent is extended.
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