Posted on 08/05/2019 8:53:48 PM PDT by ransomnote
After aging out of his family health insurance and switching to a cheaper over-the-counter insulin sold at Walmart, a young man with type 1 diabetes has died.
Josh Wilkerson was 27 when he died this past June, The Independent reported Monday. When he turned 26 and became too old to remain on his stepfather’s health insurance, his other option was health insurance provided by his workplace, a dog kennel in Virginia. But that plan didn’t cover his $1,200 per month insulin costs. So in late 2018 he began using the ReliOn brand insulin sold over the counter at Walmart, which costs $25 a vial.
This type of insulin is not the same kind Wilkerson had been using before. ReliOn is called “human insulin” because it is manufactured using the DNA code for making human insulin and grown inside bacteria cells. Before switching to ReliOn, Wilkerson was using analog insulin, a newer-generation insulin that is similar to human insulin but genetically altered to make it quicker-acting. Human insulin therefore lowers blood sugar levels much slower than analog insulin does — it can take hours to work while analog insulin works in minutes.
Immediately prior to his death, Wilkerson agreed to stay overnight at the dog kennel for a week to earn some extra money. During the second night, he told his fiancée, Rose Walters (who also has type 1 diabetes and had been taking ReliOn), over the phone that his stomach didn’t feel well, but he would take more insulin. MORE AT LINK
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Why didn’t Obamacare cover this young man?
#1 Insulin is insulin
#2 It is up to the patient to monitor and self medicate in a timely manner
#3 Type 1 diabetes is a serious disease requiring special attention all of the time
#4 Blaming/suing the insulin company won’t help the ones who need the cheaper insulin and are responsible
Sad. But you should never try to save money on medical things. Your life is too important.
Cut back on your cell phone, your cable, anything, but not on things affecting your health.
Some years ago I have been there. I needed some expensive meds and the insurance would not pay.
So I paid for it myself and it was worth it.
I disagree. Insulin is not insulin. Insulin, like many drugs, varies with the brand. Sometimes a specific brand of medication is necessary, and the cheaper generics are not effective. Conversely, the opposite might be true. It varies with the patient. This young man had lived with Type 1 insulin quite successfully, and he knew how to take care of himself. This is a very sad story, I wish there was some agency or private charity that could have helped him.
I'm just quoting the doctor advising a recent diagnosed patient. (long story). Some brands do things differently or more effectively or quicker but insulin is what our body produces for that particular purpose. I'm guessing this man changed brands without consulting a doctor and without researching precautions and got himself in a mess. If he transitioned differently he probably would have had a different outcome.
Insulin especially in type 1 diabetes must be tailored to the individual. Insulin, depending on the type, can act in minutes and used right before meals, to taking hours to work and only needed daily. A rough example would be like glues. Some are instant bonding and some take 12 hours to cure.
This is so sad. You can not afford 1200 a month when you work for a dog kennel. When we were on Medicaid, they would not cover the insulin my husband took when we paid 1200 a month for cobra Ins. Even now the Medicare supplemental Ins. Doesn’t want to pay for his type of insulin. Only cheaper one.
But have no problem with paying hundreds of dollars a month for a cell phone. Which is bandwidth & storage not a product produced, labeled, stored & distributed under cGMP’s.
Use a landline & email for g*ds sake.
Diabetes seems like exactly the sort of thing one would expect insurance or Medicaid to cover. It’s not like it’s something rare or exotic. Insulin treatment is hardly experimental, it’s been around for decades. I mean... what good is insurance that doesn’t cover treatment for such a common disorder?
He was successful in using the new drug for at least 6 months before he died. Must be more to story.
Did he switch insulins with doctor approval? Also, drug companies ALL have programs that supply expensive, name brand drugs to people who cannot afford them. If course, the article failed to mention any of the above.
“Something in him, you could just tell, was different,” she said. “I would tell him, ‘Check your blood sugar,’ and he would check it and it would be high.”
...
And there you go. He wasn’t doing what he should have been doing.
>His blood sugar was reportedly 17 times higher than normal.
That would put him at 1700.
Sounds like he 1) wasn’t testing to see how the new insulin worked or 2) drank a lot of beer and undershot his insulin.
This is just an article by big pharma trying to push people away from Walmart insulin. Bernie brought this s*** up, and when people pushed back because cheap insulin is readily available, big pharma saw its chance.
This is a recycled story from quite a while ago...
Each patient has different needs and metabolism, therefore different insulin types.
Mixing and matching or simply changing types without concurrent serial glucose monitoring will get you killed.
Yes we asked the same thing.he used the pens successfully, then new Ins would not cover that type. When he had Medicaid those rx companies that help people specially will not help if you have medicaud.
He consulted with Dr before he aged out of ins.
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