Another Late Night

Up late again. Hopefully my sugar levels will return to an acceptable level for sleeping soon. Gonna be tired tomorrow, again.  After scouring the internet for all the possible videos of Keilwerth Saxophones, (I'm really interested in their sound right now) I decide to see if there is any news on the diabetes front. I find an interesting article from the New York Times that really captures what people with Type 1 Diabetes and chronic illnesses face in regards to health management, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/health/even-small-medical-advances-can-mean-big-jumps-in-bills.html?_r=0

Some quotes that really struck me:

- Dr. Spencer Owades, a dentist in suburban Denver with Type 1 diabetes, said he was shocked to discover that his test strips — which cost just pennies to make — were priced at $1.50 apiece when he ran out and had to buy them at a pharmacy. He usually received them in the mail through his insurer and uses five to 10 a day.

“It’s a printer model,” he said, “where the printer is cheap, but they get you on the cartridges.” He added: “But if you have diabetes, they have you over a barrel.”

- Mr. Kliff, the financial analyst, said some companies were no longer willing to sell in Germany as ever-tougher price negotiations have eaten into their margins. “I’m not saying they can’t make money there — they can,” he said. “But they can’t make the kind of money they make in the U.S.” He added that diabetes treatments remained highly profitable in the United States; insulin, for example, yields profit margins of around 70 percent.

I feel fortunate to have insurance at this time and for the American Care Act. But with the current state of the economics behind chronic illness, without either there would be no way I could continue following my dreams, much less any dream except paying for health supplies. I don't even want to imagine how much all of this will cost five to ten years from now without insurance.  

Also, f.y.i. most insurance companies don't cover AAA batteries or the inserter of the Insulin Pump Infusion Set. Without the inserter you can't receive insulin into your body and without the batteries the pump doesn't run at all.