Losing job/insurance and the options that follow

Or me

Sure… nobody is saying it wouldn’t be a PITA, but as we are both saying we are talking about what we’d do in a hard-times situation when other options weren’t available…

Also re: my eyes, they are stable and doing well now, thanks. The reason it got so bad for a while was having really awful medical coverage during graduate school and not getting the necessary care earlier on, which goes back to the point that losing insurance is super dangerous for diabetics.

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This is great to read, @Cardamom.

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Sure, but you are making comments like you’d choose cable tv over having modern insulins, which either means you are way more attached to your cable tv than I can understand or you are making a lot of assumptions that the rest of us disagree with about how relatively not a big deal it would be.

I love cable. And if I lost my job what else would I have to do with time except manage diabetes and watch TV?

And you don’t seem to understand why statements like this are truly offensive to people who have lived through R/NPH. But my video, though…watch out! World’s ending. Everyone knows you’re being sarcastic about this which is what’s bothering people.

Regardless…everyone knows where everyone else stands on this particular topic. As @Michel stated, we should make sure this thread doesn’ drift too far from its original intent.

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You know something interesting——

We’ve discussed a number of times how Walmart has R and NPH vials for $25…

Well they actually have 2 different varieties of them at the Walmart near where I live. They are kept on seperate shelves in their cooler to keep them seperate because they are absolutely identical and otherwise indistinguishable… there’s the $25 cash vials. And the vials that are billed to insurance for $178.

Found that interesting… it’s food for thought…

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It’s not really that interesting to me, or food for thought. We agree that there are many issues with “the system”…this is just one of those problems that will hopefully (one day) be addressed.

It’s very interesting to me… apply the same sorts of ratios to, say, a box of Lantus pens for example—say they “cost” $500 for example… and we might estimate that they actually have a fair market value of about $70.

Although we can’t really say for sure, because the rebate amount is a tightly guarded secret

This is how our medical market works for almost everything. Welcome to private insurance, the driving factor behind it. If you don’t like it, you probably should consider supporting universal health care options.

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lol, the us government pays $400 for hammers and toilet seats. They wouldn’t be my first choice to get insulin prices right.

And yet other first world counries’ governments manage to negotiate significantly lower prices for insulin

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The myth of the $600 hammer

Fraud, Waste and Abuse DO exist and I witnessed it first hand when in the Army. But because one system is broken is no reason to not try and fix another (or that) system.

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I think everyone who’s ever worked for, in, or around government has witnessed plenty. Agree that doesn’t mean the other problems shouldn’t be addressed, just don’t agree that they’re capable of doing it.

I’d like to see instead full price disclosures with insulin, elimination of PBMs. And a platform created where manufactuers are competing for my business. I believe that would lead to both lower costs and better innovations.

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Medicare is far more efficient than any private insurance. (Which is not saying it’s perfect by any means, but as far efficiency goes, it’s the best.)

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Can you give an example of a country that has made this work? I know they have something like that in Singapore, but the government heavily regulates the industry still. The country is so much smaller too that it would be hard to compare to the U.S.

I’m really not very familiar how it works or doesn’t in any other countries. Painfully familiar with how it doesn’t here…

This would be nice, but it’s as big a pipe dream as universal healthcare. Lots of people at the top (pharma) would ensure this doesn’t happen.