I was called by a friend yesterday. He wanted to ask about chronic illness. I wasn't apprehensive. I've told the story of getting diabetes type 1 so many times. Still, no matter how many times I tell it, something hurts. The thing that hurts the most is that this is an easily manageable condition. Or disease. Call it whatever you will. It is easily managed with the proper support. And how many conditions are like that? If we only had the proper resources, what could we easily deal with?
In 2017, I wrote a poem about the healthcare debates that were going on in this country. The healthcare debates that, every few months, rise again like the horror movie villain you thought you were finished with. The thing about living in the United States with a chronic illness is that there is no real safety. Every day is a alleyway with poor lighting; it is a blind corner; a strange noise, although in a familiar place, is still scary. Even without having an illness, chronic or not, the specter of possibly getting diagnosed is enough to make most middle and lower class people afraid. Especially as healthcare regulations get more and more relaxed to favor those who run the system and profit off its heartlessness.
Before the ACA, or Obamacare, was passed, I remember seeing so many stories of people being denied coverage for suddenly being diagnosed with a "pre-existing" condition. Imagine being kicked off your healthcare because you were diagnosed with something that wasn't in your family history. The only thing pre-existing in that is greed. I remember when I turned 24 looking for health insurance plans. Even the expensive ones did not accept me. My life was prohibitively expensive for them. Put another way, my life was not of sufficient value for them to invest back into me.
I'm not here to mince words. There is no free market when the choices are to pay or die. Without the support of healthcare, too many people have met death too early. Before the ACA was passed, 45,000 tombstones a year should have been inscribed with the lament that loose regulations, greed, and lack of investment caused a body to be planted long before it should have been. Said another way: by prioritizing profits and greed over care, we are allowing capitalistic eugenics to take place. By this I mean that if one does not have the right amount of money to survive, one will die. This happens due to our country's laws prioritizing profits over care.
Let me be a bit more detailed about what diabetes type 1 is. It is a condition in which the pancreas no longer produces insulin. Insulin is a hormone which acts like a key to allow sugar to be absorbed from the blood stream and into cells so that those cells can use the sugar for energy. Without insulin, sugar can build up in the blood stream and cause some really nasty long term problems such as nerve damage, kidney damage, heart disease, loss of eyesight, and in particularly nasty situations, the loss of limbs. This happens because the blood may become blocked and be unable to give oxygen to parts of the body. If this happens, that part of the body dies and must be amputated or risk the death of the rest of the body.
However, the good news is that the condition can be managed and is successfully managed by millions of people with relative ease. All one has to do is check their blood sugar to ensure it is in balance and, should it not be, take the appropriate action to re-balance it: if the sugar is too high, take more insulin or possibly get some exercise to cause the body to absorb more sugar. If the sugar is too low, eat more food. It is simple in its execution, but it is complicated by the availability of proper resources.
One of the most important resources for a diabetic is money. Money buys testing supplies; money buys insulin; money pays for insurance plans. Money is prerequisite for life in America. Especially for those who have a chronic health condition. As with anything in the United states, some things cost more than others. Even if they shouldn't. For example, there are several testing supply companies which make it so that a diabetic can poke their finger and get a small amount of blood onto a strip in order to know what their sugar is and respond accordingly. Without insurance, some test strips cost upwards of $1 per strip. As a diabetic, I should be testing about 5 to 10 times a day. That is $150 to $300 extra every month. The good news is there are sets of 100 test strips available for just under $18. That's about $27 to $54 a month. Far more manageable.
Unfortunately, testing is only part of the equation. If I test my sugar, and my sugar is too high, then I must take action. Although earlier I said that one could exercise in order to drop their sugar, this is assuming that they have some insulin present in their body. Without insulin, the sugar will not drop no matter what a person does. Cells will not open. They will not get rid of the sugar in the blood stream. This, along with some history, is what makes the upcoming information about the price of insulin so grotesque.
When insulin was originally invented, the inventor sold the patent for $1. They wanted to make sure that no one died needlessly. When I originally began taking an insulin called Humalog, I was 12 years old. At that time, each 10 mL vial of insulin cost about $21. I still take Humalog today. The price is now around $270 per 10 mL vial. It is the exact same thing. I need about 2 vials of insulin a month to survive. Insulin is non-negotiable. If I do not have it, I will die. It will be a painful death. My body will begin to break down its own fat and muscle in order to try to feed itself. It will be swimming in sugar but won't be able to use any of it. I will likely slip into a coma. I will die. Regardless of who reads this, it should be unconscionable.
The poem below is the piece I referenced so long ago. I felt that I needed to explain a lot before I got into it because otherwise, you might be wondering why is this fit white man yelling about healthcare? Because it is a system that has turned people into profit and our politicians do nothing about it except to defend the system which keeps winding up on so many people's epitaphs.
If you feel the same way I do: that healthcare is prohibitively expensive; that no one should live in fear of something easily manageable; that our politicians have a duty to protect their citizens and hold people and systems which do harm accountable for the harm they cause; that the best apology is changed behavior, then I implore you to vote only for candidates who have explicitly stated they are fully committed to medicare for all. The people we invest in grow; this is why the wealth of the rich has increased by trillions while the wealth of the middle class has fallen. This is why nearly 530,000 people cite medical expenses as a reason for bankruptcy.
I cannot do it alone. For my and several others who cannot or do not have the ability to speak for themselves, please make sure that your vote reflects your values.
Thank you for your time
Drew
