For patients with Type 1 diabetes, having good health insurance is a necessity. Sadly it seems that nowadays, more than ever, insurance companies are not out to help their clients but instead they merely want to make money. Every day in my office I see situations that sicken me. Patients who are unable to get the necessary medications and equipment needed to survive with diabetes, let alone to excel in their treatment. This awful Obama care system that was supposed to provide affordable healthcare to all, seems to have actually made things worse for most people, myself included. It seems to me that now less jobs are offering insurance and if they do the prices are astronomical. If you try to buy insurance the deductibles are high and then the fees seem to be higher as well.
The whole point of insurance is to keep us safe right and to cover us when something happens right? So does it seem that the insurance companies and the drug companies seem to feed off of one another and everything just gets more and more expensive. Seems like more people who once had insurance now can't afford it, no thanks to Obamacare. And if they can afford the insurance, the coverage of medications and insulin pump supplies is too high to afford. How can an insurance company refuse to pay for a medication prescribed by a doctor? How can the insurance companies make deals and pick and choose which medications they will and won’t cover? How is that even legal? So we have to now pay through the nose for coverage that only allows you a few select medications, praying that we can get what we need. Even though in a year it will change anyway based on the new deals the company makes with the drug manufacturers. Explain to me why I am paying $600 a month and still have a $5000 deductible that I have to meet before you will pay for my supplies? I mean you know I will need them to live right? It’s not like I can be safe and not get diabetes, cause you know I already kind of have it….
I honestly don't know which is worse, the fact that these insurance companies and drug companies are allowed to make exclusive deals with one another, or that they can refuse to pay for any medication that a doctor has ordered. Where is our wonderful government in all of this? How exactly are there no rules to regulate the fees and the selective preferences of the companies? Can’t the government say to these greedy companies- enough or stop, let the patient have what they need!
Are these companies full of greedy rulers who seriously can only see the short end of things. To me this is how their meetings go: “Look by making a contract with company A we can save blank amount of money. When in reality their refusal to provide adequate care ends up costing them more when patients are hospitalized and ending up blind or on dialysis or some other awful complication. I actually got a letter of denial for insulin for a patient, the company said to try metformin. They are not even near the same classification of medication. Hello insurance companies, type 1 diabetes is a condition where body makes zero (0) insulin, metformin does not produce insulin, so it is not a useful medication in Type 1 Diabetes. There are patients how do respond better to one brand of insulin then to another. There are patients who have side-effects to one brand vs another. Honestly, there are some patients who prefer one brand because it is what they have used to stay alive for the last 30 years of their life and they feel safe on it. They are afraid to try something different when what they use works!! The insulin is literally our lifeline people. It prevents us from dying. Now I am sure in your eyes death would possibly be a cheaper alternative to this medication but, seriously……..
As a patient and a provider both, I think we all need to stand up for ourselves, lets do something to make these “for profit” companies get some regulations so we can get the care we need and the care we deserve. The drug and insurance companies are surely not going to cut into their salaries to help us stay alive so it looks like we need to do it on our own! Write to your local leaders and fight for all of us!!