Diabetes: An Expensive Disease
Back when I was a young bird with type 1 diabetes, insulin cost about $70 dollars per bottle. (And I had to walk uphill both ways to the endocrinologist’s office.) I had no concept of this cost, or how it played into my family’s finances, at the time. I would just open the fridge door, grab the bottle, uncap the orange top to a 1cc syringe, and take the units my mom would yell to me from the kitchen sink.
“Two. Two of Regular should do it. Rotate to your right arm this time, okay?”
“Okay!” (And then I’d proceed to jab it into my left arm because I’m right-handed and also stubborn.)
Now, twenty-five years later, insulin has taken a bit of a price hike. I just ordered a three month supply of Humalog from Medco and the total for the insulin came to six hundred and ninety-seven dollars. For six bottles of Humalog that will be all gobbled up by early March. (And thanks to a high, but manageable-on-paper deductible, we’re responsible for the full cost this round.) Almost seven hundred dollars worth of insulin.
We’re lucky that we’re able to pay for that cost without panicking, but knowing what these bottles cost without the assistance of insurance makes me look at everything through a diabetes lens. When three days are up on my insulin pump site, I am very aware of Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Six Until Me.*
