Kimberly Cavanaugh takes pains to eat healthily carefully planning,
prepping and cooking three meals a day. The key keeping her blood
sugar in check
that starts with a dose of calculation and a shot of insulin. You
know, I can always tell when my blood sugar is low or high without
even testing it. My eyesight gets a little blurry or
I'm sweating what I usually uses everything in here. The Virginia
resident is alive and stays alive because of insulin. In her early
twenties, Kimberly slipped just briefly in monitoring her blood sugar
and missed that It was spiking. Definitely could have died from it.
Your blood sugar gets so high that the sugar turns into acid in your
blood, and it can be fatal.
So I actually was in a diabetic coma for three days. It was very
scary, and that was just from not taking insulin for maybe two days.
In the past, she's rationed her doses because she couldn't afford
a full supply. The result. Kidney and vision issues
had a lot of laser surgeries. 2018 survey found that a quarter of
diabetics in America rationed their insulin.
Meantime, black markets and insulin exchanges have become commonplace
in some areas and online. Kimberly is well covered now. But even
so, the costs are daunting. Even with insurance. It's still costing
me about $120 a month just for the insulin that's not needles or
test strips and going to the doctor. I go every three months. It's
a lot. It's a lot of maintenance, but it's
Prolonging my life, so it's necessary more than 37 million Americans
live with diabetes that includes an astounding one in three seniors.
Some seven million Americans depend on insulin. Untreated diabetes
is a monster disease, causing nerve damage, heart disease, stroke
loss of limbs, and it's a leading cause of death in America.
Despite such need and 100 years of existence, insulin list prices
soared last decade. The idea of capping insulin costs is popular
with voters. But it's taken years to get this far now on the table
as part of Senate Democrats proposed climate and health care, bill,
Why is it so hard to get
Um what seems on the surface to be very popular healthcare policies
passed through Congress complexity of all of these systems, and it
is really truly complex, how they're different stakeholders.
I do this for a living, and I'm confused all the time. I think Andrew
Mulcahy is a health care economist with the Rand Corporation. There's
really a lot of variation and a lot of unknowns that our health care
system and that makes it hard for anyone considering a policy alternative.
You know how it's going to play out in real time?
Just look at the insulin system. Pharmaceutical companies set one
price a list price that doubled between 2012 and 2017. According
to the health Care Cost Institute. It has decreased slightly in the
past two years. Next, though, an unusual industry pharmaceutical
benefits managers, those are go betweens who negotiate a different
and lower price for health insurers. How much exactly is often secret
as is their cut.
Which critics say is now a big part of the problem. All of this leads
to a host of prices at the pharmacy depends on how and if you are
insured.
Overall in the U. S. What patients pay for insulin is seven times
plus higher than those in other countries. So that's an enormous
difference. Senate Democrats plan would add incentives to boost competition
and a $35 cap on out of pocket costs for a 30 Day supply cutting
costs for about a quarter of patients with insurance.
But giving no help to those without insulin for me, is like air to
anyone else. I use insulin around 6 to 7 times a day. Just depending
on the day epic injection 32 year old Mila Clark turned her diabetic
coping mechanism into a business.
Great as the hang green woman. Her videos, spoon out recipes and
pinches of get real advice for tasty, healthy food and navigating
the medical system. Through all of my videos, I try and answer questions
that I know that I've had about diabetes management, but that I also
know that people struggle with and so we've got a bunch of really
good stuff here. We have fears. There's an element too few understand
disparity in the system for the uninsured and people like her.
General patients of color and specifically black patients and black
women. We've kind of seen the stories about how hard it is to get
listened to in the health care system. It took me four years to really
convinced doctors that I was doing the things that they told me to
do, and that it just wasn't working. Black and Hispanic adults are
60 to 70% more likely to have diabetes than their white peers and
even more likely to suffer consequences. Dr. Joshua Joseph is an
endocrinologist at Ohio State.
University Wexner Medical Center. We think about the impact of diabetes
and the higher prevalence of diabetes in minorities populations here
in the United States, it really had to think upstream and is really
due to the structural inequities that we see in the United States
and comes down to the social determinants of health for diabetics,
health and life depends on stability.
So to Kimberly Cavanaugh. Price cap on insulin would be a start.
We're talking about $35 period end of sentence like I could not be
more grateful for that.
But if it's just for someone who's insured, I don't think that's
good enough. There are more people like Kimberly and Mylan diagnosed
with diabetes every day, grateful for any action. They also say Washington
needs to prep many more ingredients to tackle not just the cost of
insulin, but the crisis underneath for the PBS news hour. I'm Lisa