My 11th Diaversary.
TL;DR - Health insurance is still tied to having a job, and that's insane to me.
First, Some Context
11 years ago today I had an early morning appointment with my nephrologist. It wasn't out of the ordinary though - I typically see her every 3 to 4 months because I've had a chronic kidney disease since I was a kid, so it was just a routine appointment.
I got to the appointment and all seemed stable except my doctor noticed something different about my lab work. She told me that my blood sugar was sky high, and that I needed to get to the emergency room right away.
So, I did that. I drove myself there, parked, walked right in, and within an hour of showing up I was dressed in a gown and laying in a hospital bed, awaiting whatever came next.
I spent 2 nights in the hospital there, and when I came out my life had changed forever.
I Need Insulin To Survive
I'm a Type 1 diabetic, and the thing about that is I require insulin to survive. My body no longer produces insulin naturally like most people, so without it I'll die.
To make insulin delivery into my system a little easier, I have 2 devices attached to my body at all times, each with a tiny piece of plastic sticking through the first few layers of my skin. One is a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) that tracks my blood sugar levels every 5 minutes. This is attached on my belly, and consists of 2 items: a sensor that I have to swap out every 10 days, and a transmitter that I have to swap out every 30 days. The second is an insulin pump that I have to inject 3-days worth of insulin into before attaching to one of 6 different places on my body - and I have to swap that out every 3 days.
This may sound like a lot, and it is. For me to live for a month I require (at a minimum):
- One CGM transmitter (about $300 without insurance)
- Three CGM sensors (about $500 without insurance)
- Ten insulin pumps (about $700 without insurance)
- About two vials of insulin (about $500 without insurance)
Who Can Afford All That?
That's about $2,000 a month just for my diabetic medications. Not too many people can afford that, especially those with low or no income - PLUS I rely on even more prescriptions for my kidneys. There's another debate around why prescription drugs and medical devices cost so much money to begin with, but we'll have to save that for a future article.
Getting To The Point
WHY IS HEALTH INSURANCE TIED TO HAVING A JOB???? It makes zero sense to me. What makes even less sense to me is how since that IS the case, how is it so easy to terminate someone's employment? These two things do not go together. At least one of them needs to change.
If a company is not meeting their numbers they can just decide to lay off a percentage of their workers so they can keep their heads above water until the next time they need to do the same. Meanwhile those workers no longer have a job, and no longer have health benefits. They can no longer use insurance to pay for their prescriptions unless they opt to purchase health insurance coverage themselves ... but what money are they expected to use for that coverage?!
I'm still learning how to write and how to open up and express myself and my thoughts. At this point, I'm not sure how to end this post since there's a never ending amount of frustration involved here, haha.
Do you agree? Have I overlooked something, or do you have a difference in opinion? Feel free to message me @chapeljuice.dev on Bluesky and maybe we can get a conversation going there for more people to see.