Insulin prices are crippling

In seventh grade I became severely sick for about two weeks. I was peeing in my sleep, always cold, and I felt like I was in a fog. I did not tell my mom or complain about how I felt because that is just how I am wired; I do not complain or whine when things do not go my way.

I kept going on with my usual schedule until one particular day at school. I can remember passing the attendance sheet around and I kept dropping it, I’d pick it back up and drop it again. Same thing with my pen. I did not really think much of it at the time. After first bell I walked to my second class of the day. This is when I started to get miserable headaches. I finished class with my head down for most of it and continued to lunch. During lunch I was sitting with my friends, but I laid down on the ground. One of the monitors yelled at me to get up, so I went to the bathroom and laid in one of the stalls for a couple of minutes until I finally went to the school nurse. I called my mom to come pick me up and passed out while I was waiting for her. We went straight to the ER. I do not remember a whole lot after that. They had an IV in each of my arms and I passed out from the pain in my head. When I woke up, I was informed that I was now a type 1 diabetic. The reason I had become so sick was because my body was going into DKA (Diabetic ketoacidosis). DKA is when your body is not producing insulin, so it must find other ways to get energy. My body was basically eating itself from the inside, I had lost twenty pounds in two weeks. The cause of the headaches was because my brain was slowly starting to swell out of my skull. If I don’t get insulin I die.

Diabetics and Type 1 diabetics should not be subjected to such high insulin prices. “High insulin prices have been decried for years by advocates, doctors, and members of Congress. Diabetics typically use two to three vials of insulin per month, so costs can shoot well above $6,000 a year for people with no insurance, inadequate coverage, or high deductibles.” For a larger guy like me I tend to use more then two or three vials per month so it could get even more expensive. I don’t understand why they are making it hard and somewhat impossible for people to get the medicine they need to survive. It’s literally life and death and the government isn’t taking this seriously enough. It costs $2-$4 to produce and are being sold for $300 dollars. The top insulin production and diabetes supply company is worth $39.2 billion. There is absolutely no other explanation for insulin prices than greed.

Large insulin manufactures are taking advantage of the diabetic community. Insulin costs for the average US patient doubled from 2012-2016, but usage remained flat. The only thing there is to do about it is have the government enforce rules lowering the cost. The manufactures are money hungry and nothing will change that.