Category: Healthcare

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He's Not Wrong

I'm all for this. But at the same time—if I may play Devil's advocate here for a moment—where will the money come from to fund the doctors', nurses', and staff salaries? Who will pay for building and maintaining the hospitals and treatment centers? Who will fund research?

Government, yes. But where will the government get that money?

Where they get money for everything else. Taxes.

Taxes that—as of the way everything in this country is structured right now—will most adversely affect the poor.

So technically speaking, healthcare still won't be free—althought it most definitely will be cheaper than going into the ER for a relatively minor upper respiratory infection that could've been handled by your Primary Care Physician or even an Urgent Care facility, but ending up with an overnight hospital stay "for observation" and walking out the next day with a $10 prescription and a $14K bill…

(Yes, this happened to me a couple months ago. Thankfully I'd already met my insurance deductible for the year and it cost me only a few dollars, but not everyone is so lucky.)

Posted on

This is Beyond Unacceptable

Damn the Republicans all to Hell.

I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have decent insurance. Come to think of it, I do know. I'd die.

I'm on two types of insulin, as undoubtedly most Type 2 diabetics are: a short acting type to be taken before meals, and a once-a-day long-acting variety that helps keep glucose stable the rest of the time.

In my particular case, it's Novolog for short-acting, and Tresiba for long-acting. My endocrinologist prescribes these in 90 days supplies which—as you can imagine—is a lot of boxes of pre-filled syringes. With my insurance I pay $80 for each 90-day supply; a steal I know. I looked at the retail price they conveniently print out on each order, and I was beyond shocked. (The same goes for the other medications I take on a regular basis.)

Novolog—which is basically just plain old insulin—in that 90-day quantity retails for $3100. The Tresiba goes for $2400.

So, four refills a year of each would come to a grand total of $22,000 a year.

That comes to a little less than a third of my pre-tax income.

Who can afford to pay that?

And don't even get me started on the cost of the Libre3 monitors…