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Senate Republicans have just blocked the $35/month insulin price cap for Americans on private insurance from Democrats' spending bill.
Here’s what happens when folks can’t afford insulin: they try to ration it. When that happens their sugars rise to levels where their cells, starved of glucose, switch to using ketones for intracellular energy. Their blood pH drops, they start breathing faster and faster to maintain a neutral pH. It’s unsustainable, the pH drops to 7.1, 6.9, 6.7… they become unresponsive, they have a seizure. If they’re lucky someone finds them and calls 911. They come to the ED where, because the high glucose is drawing fluid into the blood, they have peed out gallons of fluid. We slam them with fluids, bicarbonate, insulin once we know their potassium levels. They go to the ICU where care costs 10,000 dollars a day. They stay for days, weeks sometimes. Even, if you’re heartless enough to ignore the human cost, the “cost cost” of What we’re doing to diabetics is insane and stupid. It makes no sense. It’s inefficient. It costs more to fix DKA then it does to prevent them DKA. Way more.
Easy medical decision. Easy moral decision. Easy economic decision. And yet…
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
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