Woman says her son couldn't afford his insulin – now he's dead | Hacker News Reader

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

cbsnews.com

31 pointsmethodover32 comments

This sounds like an issue with medical/financial literacy or possibly mental illness, which are also serious. The self-pay price is discounted and can get really low with the manufacturer coupons/rebates or the one pharmacy chains scan for you if you’re uninsured. Generics are available; they are not as error-proof as, e.g., Tresiba, but they would have saved his life. Switching from pens to vials saves money.

Please be kind if you reply; I am diabetic and have spent time trying to save money on a really high prescription copay. I’ve caught myself doing what this person did, rationing or going without when there were ways to get medicine. Thankfully I didn’t live alone and someone snapped me out of that thinking. I would like to see the FDA stop the stair-step method to keep generics from being widely prescribed but if you’re waiting for that, please don’t — there are temporary solutions in the meantime.

I had this problem during six months of self-employment. I found that the cheapest way to get good insulin (Novolog) is to fly to Bangkok / Chiang Mai and hit up all the pharmacies until you have a year's supply. If you're not unlucky, you shouldn't have a problem at the airports.

I think it cost ~$25-35 USD for several pen cartridges of Novolog.

That is a great idea if it’ll keep that long. How effective was it towards the end of the year?

You don't even need to go that far for cheap insulin. I'm a type 1 diabetic in Seattle, and I've gone to Canada a few times for ~$25-$30/vial USD of Humalog (Novolog is also available) insulin. It's over the counter there, and I've never had an issue with US customs bringing up to a year supply back home.

Clicked on the link thinking it'd be the article about my cousin who went through the exact same thing about a year ago.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6415921/Mother-says...

RIP Jesse.

Practically free in Belgium, I really think Europe is 3 steps ahead in healthcare

Even in Brazil, a third world country, you can get insulin for Free.

One of my friends moved back to China because of the cost of health care.

It was ironic because his parents basically gave up everything to immigrate to the US.

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.

It's also not as rare as it should be. In my area recently, a man died because he couldn't afford the oxygen supply he required.

That's just so sad. These medicines should be more available for people. We're living in yr 2019; shouldn't be this way!

This only happens in America. We don’t care if you die from lack of medical care or from gun violence. People absolutely just don’t care unless they are told to. A few months ago a huge chunk of our country was more worried about a caravan of immigrants than the other more likely threats. Our priorities are just screwed up. This is all to keep the public distracted and not focused on fixing real problems.

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.

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.

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).

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 determined to get life-survival medication no matter what in the US: get rid of all of their property and assets except one vehicle and one house, and get Medicaid. If someone became disabled from a non-work-related condition, there is Medicare SSDI... and they may also qualify for Medicaid. The reason to get rid of property are two-fold: there are maximum qualification limits and bankruptcy would take it. A bankruptcy lawyer costs $2000-4000 FYI.

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).

Could someone in this situation steal insulin & claim self defense?

When you drill down to the detail story (click the name link), you see that Alex chose to go without insurance altogether despite his state (MN) having an ACA exchange with fully subsidized plans.

Neither mentions where he got his prescription from after being off the parents plan, if he pursued one at all.

One thing worth trying if you are in this situation is to go to a university or research hospital and volunteer as a research subject, if you can find someone who is researching your particular problem. This worked for a friend of mine who needed anti-psychotic medication when he was uninsured.

In Greece is free. Even for uninsured people.

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.

This shouldn’t have been downvoted. It’s an accurate assessment.

Just a little life pro-tip: Even if you view 'the other side' as horrible murderers for profit, you should tone down your viewpoint when talking publicly because you will not convince anyone of your viewpoint by saying these people are horrible murderers for profit.

reality stings

Sure, but my advice was only on how to better persuade people, not how to better bash the truth into their skulls.

This ignores the Clinton wing of the party, which votes with the Republicans on these sorts of issues that impact the pockets of the large political donors.

>BERNIE SANDERS INTRODUCED a very simple symbolic amendment Wednesday night, urging the federal government to allow Americans to purchase pharmaceutical drugs from Canada, where they are considerably cheaper. Such unrestricted drug importation is currently prohibited by law.

The Senate voted down the amendment 52-46, with two senators not voting. Unusually, the vote was not purely along party lines: 13 Republicans joined Sanders and a majority of Democrats in supporting the amendment, while 13 Democrats and a majority of Republicans opposed it.

https://theintercept.com/2017/01/12/cory-booker-joins-senate...

Obamacare rules are still in full effect in MN.

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.

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