Posted on 06/30/2016 8:46:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
A Mississippi state representative suggested that a woman buy her family's diabetes medication after she wrote to him to ask for help with increasing difficulties obtaining Medicaid assistance.
Richland resident Nicole Nichols wrote to the Mississippi House of Representatives Monday morning to voice her concern that children with Type 1 diabetes "aren't getting the necessary diabetes supplies and meds they need to stay healthy."
"We have recently begun having a lot of problems with Medicaid/CHIPS coverage of the essential diabetes supplies needed, not only to keep our kids healthy, but to literally keep them alive," Nichols wrote to Mississippi lawmakers. "No parents should have to fight for so long for their child's essential medical supplies and medical needs when it's explicitly stated as a covered benefit."
Later that day, Mississippi State Rep. Jeffrey Guice, R-Ocean Springs, replied, "I am sorry for your problem. Have you thought about buying the supplies with money that you earn?"(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
The lifespan of a person with insulin-dependent diabetes who is not receiving insulin can be measured in days.
Optics on this one are bad....
Do we owe everyone who resides within our borders full medical, dental, vision, etc.?
Yeah right, she shouldn’t have to pay anything for her child when welfare from the taxpayers can pay right?
We’re becoming a nation of stupid Lemmings.
What pump is this child on ? My grandaughter has an insulin pump and her infusion sets are $160 a month and insulin reservoirs are $50 a month if you buy them with no insurance. Other then that the only things required is a glucose tester and test strips and lancets, syringes for manual shots, and the insulin itself. Insulin being the medication and the most expensive item I cannot see any insurance/especially medicaid not covering insulin, my grandaughters insulin if bought retail would be about $700.00 a month. But $2500 a month just for the supplies listed above is way off the chart.
It says in the article that the woman’s husband’s diabetes meds are covered by his insurance. So, why doesn’t the insurance cover the daughter?
Also, I wonder if the woman contacted any diabetes associations for help? Many companies offer low-cost medications for people who cannot afford the full price.
(Of course, those low-cost meds end up costing the rest of us more...)
This is a special situation. There should be a private charity that can help with this. As was said , insulin dependent diabetes is dangerous. Especially for a kid, so there has to be a way. This is a lousy situation for all sides
This “bootstraps” nonsense is obsolete. Nomatter the cause, this economy is clearly not working for many people willing to work hard and get educated.
I see people every day who are engineers and earn the top 5% of salaries in the country. Yet they have less purchasing power (while working more hours) than a factory worker several decades ago.
When I first started in the business, engineers could afford a house and children well before they turned 30. Today they live with parents or studio apartments at best.
Clearly something is very wrong
Nichols responded to Guice by detailing how much each portion of her daughter's medication costs, which amounts to about $2,500 a month,
Nichols' husband also has Type 1 diabetes, but he has not had any problems receiving medication, which is covered by his insurance through his employer, Nichols said.
$2,500 a month is a large chunk of change for most people, however, how come his daughter is not covered under his plan from work?
-—If someone is going to DIE within the span of 72 hours—
The gist of the complaint seems to be the supplies, not the insulin. Type 1 diabetes requires insulin and is covered by private and gubbmint insurers. The supplies maybe not for some insurances. But even then insulin and supplies for my grandaughter would be about $1000 a month bought retail, a far cry from $2500. Again not supplying insulin is equal to a hospital trip for DKA which would cost the medicaid the equivelant of many years of insulin for just a 6 day hospital stay.
It looks like these medication prices are spiking. In the case of insulin there are two partial explanations given.
A) Shenanigans on the part of prescription plans which is driving up the wholesale price.
B) There’s bio-identical insulin which is being developed which will tank the prices, so manufacturers are getting what they can now before that happens.
There are a number of assistance programs offered through manufacturers. Perhaps the representative could have done a Google search and found these things out? Instead of asking his constituent about whether or not Medicaid covered it??
I have sent plenty of people home from my ER with insulin pens. I have also seen many people admitted to the ICU for diabetic ketoacidosis when they stopped being compliant with their insulin for whatever reason. I think it’s always cheaper to just send them home with the pen. If you don’t, they’re going to show up in DKA later and it’s an automatic ICU admission which costs many thousands of dollars and ties up a lot of resources. And if they can’t afford their insulin, they sure as heck aren’t going to be able to pay for their ICU stay so the hospital ends up absorbing the cost.
My son was a T1D. The cost of his diabetic medications and equipment was more than $2000 a month.
No middle class family can afford that. That didn’t include dr appts, tests, and medications for illnesses that he was particularly vulnerable to.
The disease was nobody’s fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. He didn’t do anything wrong. It just happened.
So what’s your answer? Let the child die?
We’re at a crux where medicine has progressed to the point where we can perform miracles, but it’s too cost prohibitive to get those miracles to everybody. The only way out is to drive costs down.
Those test strips are not cheap, especially if you need to test a couple of times a day. They can run another $100/month or more. The meters are free so you have to buy a certain kind of test strip (reminds me of the inexpensive AIO printers that require you to use their specific toners that over time become costly).
I don’t know much, if anything, about Type 1 but spouse took diabetes meds for years. There were a few kinds of pills in addition to the insulin. My memory is that they weren’t cheap.
Your calculation for your granddaughter is running close to $1K/month, with insurance. For most families that is a good deal of $$$.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Obamacare rules.
It was $600 just for my son’s insulin. (Almost $200 per bottle) The sets were $35 each and he needed about 15 of those a month. (He had an issue with his immune system and the sites got infected easily) So that’s another $500. No idea how much the reservoirs cost. His kidney medication was hundreds more. (I don’t know how much because he didn’t need that until he was out of the house. I do know that he had to quit taking it when he was laid off) Add in the strips and it came to about $1500 a month.
Feeding the hypoglycemia was it’s own issue.
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