updated 2020-05-22
Republicans in Trump’s White House: “no justification in continuing the subsidies.”
The cuts in subsidies may actually hit the middle class the most.
there are around 3 million people who are uninsured because they don’t live in states that didn’t expand Medicaid,
President Trump has called the subsidies a “bailout” for the insurance industry.
The number of Americans without health insurance increased again in 2018, the second consecutive year that figure has risen after several years of declines under Obamacare, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey shows.
A coalition of Republican-led states argued in federal court that the entire health law should be tossed out.
Basically, only the rich will have health care:
A Gallup survey found that Americans borrowed $88 billion to pay for health care last year, 2018, and one in four people lost their health ins. because of cost.
High-deductible plans are popular among companies seeking to defray the spiraling cost of health care. A survey by Kaiser Family Foundation and the Los Angeles Times found that many employees in high-deductible plans postponed care or cut spending on household expenses such as food and clothing.
Among 17 states with figures reported in the survey, Texas had the highest uninsured rate among working-age adults, 25%
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/09/health-insurance-1-1-million-more-americans-lost-coverage-2018/1140304001/
Struggling to stay alive: Rising insulin prices cause diabetics to go to extremes
Meaghan Carter died alone on the sofa of her suburban Dayton, Ohio, apartment last Christmas.
Like most people with Type 1 diabetes, the 47-year-old nurse had a kit of essential supplies within reach. It contained two empty vials of her preferred insulin, a partial vial of inexpensive Walmart insulin and a half-filled container of testing strips to measure blood glucose levels.
Uninsured, between jobs and with $50 in a bank account, Carter probably had attempted to stretch a limited supply of insulin until she got a final paycheck from her last job, family members say. She was scheduled to begin a new nursing job the following week that offered health insurance.
Carter was struggling on Christmas Day, feeling nauseous and slurring her words, a roommate told Huber Heights police.
The roommate told police she thought Carter’s blood-sugar levels were off and urged her to call a doctor or a paramedic.
Carter refused, and the roommate left for work. When the roommate returned from work that night, she noticed Carter appeared to be sleeping on the sofa. The following morning, the roommate checked on Carter and realized she had died.
The Montgomery County Coroner determined Carter died on Christmas night.
Patient advocates say people have resorted to extreme measures such as taking less than the doctor prescribed to make it last longer, acquiring the drug from friends or getting it from less expensive pharmacies in Canada or Mexico.
Lack of insulin could affect 40 million people with diabetes by 2030, study finds
The price for one vial of Eli Lilly’s Humalog surged from $35 in 2001 to $234 in 2015. From 2013 to 2019, Novo Nordisk’s Novolog jumped from $289 to $540
A person with Type 1 diabetes who discontinues the drug might get sick, hospitalized with diabetic ketoacidosis or die, she says.
The health problems of diabetics who take less than they need might take longer to detect but can be just as serious.
Taking less insulin than prescribed can lead to serious health harms, Lipska says. Those could include a diabetic ulcer, a foot infection that leads to amputation or kidney damage.
“We know it’s a problem,” Lipska says. “The problem leads to, in very severe cases, patients dying, people having complications, people being admitted to the hospital.”
Blind in one eye and her vision rapidly deteriorating in the other, Sarah Theubet could not afford the medicine her body needed to slow the harmful effects of diabetes.
Theubet turned to friends she met through social media in 2016 and 2017 to solicit insulin donations while she drastically changed her diet so she would not need as much medicine.
She ate one low-carbohydrate meal each day that rarely varied: sliced lunch meat and cheese, no bread.
She barely had enough energy to make it through classes at Shasta Community College. Vision in her right eye, stabilized this decade from an operation, began to worsen because she could not afford to take insulin as prescribed. She is blind in her left eye.
“With the rationing, that was the first year my ophthalmologist noticed a (vision) decline because I was all over the place,” Theubet says of her insulin use.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/50-states/2019/03/21/diabetes-insulin-costs-diabetics-drug-prices-increase/3196757002/
another terrible drug price:
The list price of the arthritis drug Humira now costs more than $60,000 per year.