thoughts, words, deeds

entering rant mode

The Sunday News! This week, Martin Shkreli cried in court as he was sentenced to seven years in prison for his part in federal fraud charges. You may know him as the smug Pharma-bro with the punchable face who jacked up the price of a life-saving HIV medicine from $13.50 a pill to $750; I prefer to remember him as the douchebag who made a mockery of his purchasing the single copy in existence of the Wu-Tang Clan's album Once Upon A Time In Shaolin (there's still time to save us, Bill Murray!! ). So this week, my question is "Why should we feel sorry for this guy?", along with "Why are people with access to hedge funds controlling our pharmaceutical industry...instead of, ya know, like, doctors?"

I don’t feel sorry for this guy. My life is at the mercy of the pharmaceutical industry. I have type 1 diabetes, which means, in order to live (as in, not die, painfully, because the cells in my body can’t eat without help) I need insulin. There is no generic insulin. Because I’m not on a pump, I need two different kinds of insulin to live, one that lasts all day (it’s more complicated than that—the dose lasts nineteen to twenty-six hours depending on the body in question and the amount of the dose) plus insulin that acts quickly to match the food I eat. Until they find a cure, I will need at least four doses of insulin, every day, for the rest of my life (except if I skip a meal because I’m sick I also skip an injection—I never don’t take the basal dose, though).

<rant mode>So explain to me, why do I have to have a new doctor’s appointment and a new prescription every three months? I still have diabetes. It hasn’t gone away (wouldn’t that be newsworthy). I still need the syringes and test strips and insulin. When I go to the doctor, they don’t change anything. I change my dosage (as trained) more often than a doctor has. The doctor should never deny me a prescription refill because I got sick and took four months to get back to her—and when I tell her exactly what to say to the pharmacy, she shouldn’t let her receptionist fill it by saying some random kind of syringe that isn’t readily available at the pharmacy while my syringes slowly run out and I can’t get to the doctor because she’s ridiculously busy and it’s her office’s fault in the first place that the prescription was messed up. That’s irresponsible. I could die.</rant mode>

I was diagnosed in 2008 at age 31 (which means, in July, I will have my 10 year diaversary). At that time, when I came home from an eight day hospital stay, my prescriptions were roughly $600 for less than one month of medication. That’s for insulin, syringes, test strips (to check 4 times a day to make sure my blood sugar wasn’t doing something funky—I prefer 8 to 10 times a day: when I wake up, when I go to bed, before I eat to see how much insulin to take, after I eat to see if I got it right or not, and any time I feel off because I might be low and that can kill quickly (as opposed to high which kills by inches)). At this point in my diabetes career, I don’t have insurance again. Just for one month of insulin, I spent $540, which is up more than $300 from the last time I did this without insurance.

The kind of insulin hasn’t changed in the past ten years (although there are more kinds of insulin that can perform those two functions now than there were then). I’m still using the same kind of insulin I did then. Ten years later, the manufacturing process should not have changed that much, but it costs twice as much. I can get the same insulin (two kinds for $540 in US) from Canada for roughly $146. We don’t import it from Canada, by the way.

So, that’s my personal connection to the pharmaceutical industry. I don’t totally blame the manufacturers because there are hidden costs and everything has gotten more expensive in the past ten years. I don’t know if they’re controlled by hedge fund brats, but the companies that make insulin all have help programs for people who can’t afford their live saving medications that I’m in the process of trying to get on. But I do think they’re partially to blame. And so is the government that has stuck in its tentacles in pharmaceuticals, which it doesn’t know enough about. And so are the insurance agencies that make it more difficult to get the medication I need to live.

More problems have been caused by medicare setting the industrial standard (which the insurance companies use to dole out treatment) which means, when there is someone like me, who is willing and able to check her blood sugar more times than industrial standard, I have to go through special hoops to do it. Testing only four times a day is irresponsible. For goodness sake, people should test before they get behind the wheel, if nothing else. And having only 4 strips a day is not reasonable. Test strips cost between $9/50 strips and $1/strip depending on whether you use the walmart brand.

Whatever. I don’t know if the RX system in the US can be fixed. But it will require less people like Martin Shkreli (the idiot).