# Turning 26 Is A Potential Death Sentence For People With Type 1 Diabetes In America



## Northerner (Jul 22, 2019)

On the day Jathan Laverty turned 26, he was working at a Columbus, Ohio, coffee shop and freelancing as a corporate event technician, hoping to get a foot in the door of the event planning industry. This birthday turned that search for a full-time job into something urgent.

Laverty has Type 1 diabetes, and as of that day in 2017, he was no longer eligible for coverage under his parents’ health insurance. He found himself needing medication to live that he could not afford.

“It’s a human necessity for me” Laverty, now 28, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s my life or death every time I do or don’t take insulin.”

Laverty faces a health care problem unique to many millennials with Type 1 diabetes who’ve been booted off their parents’ stable health insurance. The price of insulin, the drug that keeps them alive, tripled in the US from 2002 to 2013 — and a recent studyfound that, from 2012 to 2016, its average annual cost increased from $3,200 to $5,900.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/turning-26-type-1-diabetes

This is unacceptable for any society, but especially for one of the richest countries in the world  Banting would be in despair at this inhuman profiteering from his discovery


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## Ditto (Jul 22, 2019)

That is horrendous.


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## Matt Cycle (Jul 22, 2019)

They've been banging on about the moon landings this weekend.  Great.  Ask a Type 1 in the US whether they want moon landings or insulin?


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## Lucy Honeychurch (Jul 22, 2019)

I'm on another forum with many US members, four young people have died from rationing insulin/not been able to afford it, in the past week...that's the one's we know about, no doubt there are more victims. Horrific and shocking


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## KookyCat (Jul 22, 2019)

The American dream, that’s what fuels it all.  My uncle was American (naturalised) and his daughters were born there, he was T1, his  eldest daughter is T1 and his youngest too.  He was paying for her health insurance until he died, and left a trust for her in his will.  She is gainfully employed and not badly paid but has to top up her insurance to get access to better insulin.  Her insurance would only part fund her prescription or fully fund mixed.  The eldest daughter is a lawyer so she’s fine, but is already funnelling money into retirement insurance to cover treatment and she’s been doing that since her early 30’s.  My uncle was heavily involved with a project to provide insulin to people who can’t afford it, he really loved the US aside from their horribly unfair access to healthcare.  His youngest daughter (they’re all entitled to UK residency) came here for Uni and was stunned that she didn’t have to pay for healthcare.  You want to see the situation they have with epilepsy treatment, a topic that was close to his heart because my late aunt had epilepsy.  It’s really very very shocking and sad


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## Northerner (Jul 23, 2019)

KookyCat said:


> The American dream, that’s what fuels it all.  My uncle was American (naturalised) and his daughters were born there, he was T1, his  eldest daughter is T1 and his youngest too.  He was paying for her health insurance until he died, and left a trust for her in his will.  She is gainfully employed and not badly paid but has to top up her insurance to get access to better insulin.  Her insurance would only part fund her prescription or fully fund mixed.  The eldest daughter is a lawyer so she’s fine, but is already funnelling money into retirement insurance to cover treatment and she’s been doing that since her early 30’s.  My uncle was heavily involved with a project to provide insulin to people who can’t afford it, he really loved the US aside from their horribly unfair access to healthcare.  His youngest daughter (they’re all entitled to UK residency) came here for Uni and was stunned that she didn’t have to pay for healthcare.  You want to see the situation they have with epilepsy treatment, a topic that was close to his heart because my late aunt had epilepsy.  It’s really very very shocking and sad


 Awful  I remember how shocked I was at the public's response to Obamacare and their characterisation of the NHS as some sort of death cult as an example of where things would lead


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## mikeyB (Jul 23, 2019)

Well, just be grateful you live in a country where everyone gets free healthcare. Only a small number of people can remember when that wasn’t the case. The US think it’s just a commie idea, but Adolf Hitler was a big fan of the Beveridge Report, and intended to include its ideas in a post war world.

It seems to us common sense to have a population fit enough to work and pay taxes, but that isn’t a concept that works in the US.


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## Eddy Edson (Jul 24, 2019)

It's not that they think it's a commie idea. More like a combination of being OK with what they have now (if you have a good insurance plan, which is actually many people), liking the existing choice flexibility (ditto) and dubious that a completely govt-run scheme wouldn't be a complete balls-up. 

On the last point: the difficulty of actually implementing something which would require coordinating the individual states as well as the federal level; and the very low perceived status of the federal bureaucracy amongst many Americans - it often really is pretty crappy, from my experience living there for several years - and the balls-up of the Obamacare roll-out confirmed this view for many.

But there is pretty wide support for a free Medicare plan for those who want/need it.

Anyway, that's the kind of impression I got from interminable tedious health-plan talk from Americans, only slightly less tedious than conversations about retirement plans.

The latest Marist poll illustrates:  

- Amongst Democrats, 90% support a Joe Biden-style hybrid model with a govt for-all plan plus private for those who prefer it. Only 64% support a Bernie Sanders-style total govt for-all plan and no private.
- Amongst all voters, it's 70% vs 41%.
- Even 46% of Republicans support the hybrid model.
- And incidentally, a  majority of everybody supports govt regulation of prescription prices.

So on those numbers, the NHS model and Bernie are election losers, but the hybrid model and Joe are winners. 

http://maristpoll.marist.edu/npr-pbs-newshour-marist-poll-results-analysis-6/#sthash.pJc9jkt7.dpbs


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## SB2015 (Jul 24, 2019)

I am glad that we have the NHS.


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## grovesy (Jul 24, 2019)

Eddy Edson said:


> It's not that they think it's a commie idea. More like a combination of being OK with what they have now (if you have a good insurance plan, which is actually many people), liking the existing choice flexibility (ditto) and dubious that a completely govt-run scheme wouldn't be a complete balls-up.
> 
> On the last point: the difficulty of actually implementing something which would require coordinating the individual states as well as the federal level; and the very low perceived status of the federal bureaucracy amongst many Americans - it often really is pretty crappy, from my experience living there for several years - and the balls-up of the Obamacare roll-out confirmed this view for many.
> 
> ...


From what I have read from US Diabetics posting on various sites, many are restricted by Insurance  what Drugs and equipment they pay for  and how much they have to co-pay.


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## Eddy Edson (Jul 24, 2019)

grovesy said:


> From what I have read from US Diabetics posting on various sites, many are restricted by Insurance what Drugs and equipment they pay for and how much they have to co-pay.



Sure, lots of people have crappy plans with high co-pays etc. And of course a bunch of others don't have any insurance at all. But plenty of people, apparently the majority, think their plans are generally OK and don't want to see big sweeping changes to their own arrangements. So in pragmatic terms, if you want to win an election, it may be that a Biden-ish strategy will work better than Bernie's.

Anyway, right now Trump and Republicans are certainly rubbing their hands over the Dem's moving in a Bernie direction. So it'll be interesting to see what happens in the next Dem debates, with the feedback from the polls after the first round pretty clear.


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## Nomad722 (Jul 25, 2019)

That is appalling, let's hope we don't end up with a privatized NHS in the UK.


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## mikeyB (Jul 25, 2019)

That’s in England, Nomad. The Health Service is devolved in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.


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