There’s plenty of countries with cheap insulin, and people there are fine because other treatments for diabetes are cheaper too.
This is horrfying. Shame on the atlantic for publishing that headline.
Capitalism fixes everything, duh. Why didn’t I realize. I’m so dumb. It’s science. Apply capitalism, and bam, nuclear energy.
Pardon me, but, Mr Rose, can you please tell me… What fucking better treatments?
My brother is T1D and he’s been like that since his teens. Literally the only way for him to continue to live, at all, is to take insulin.
It’s times like this that make me thankful I don’t live in the USA.
But seriously, if anyone knows of a “better” treatment for type 1 diabetes, I’m all ears. I’ve been looking for something for my brother for years, and I’ve come up with jack shit.
Bullshit take. Some people ONLY respond to insulin. Fuck whoever wrote this.
I apologize if this sounds pedantic, but what if the writer was forced to write it to keep his job along with his family’s access to food, shelter, and healthcare? So rather than punch down, I say punch up. I say fuck the owners who ultimately signed off on the article and potentially demanded it in the first place. (The Atlantic is owned by Emerson Collective which is owned by billionaire Laurene Jobs. )
what if the writer was forced to write it to keep his job along with his family’s access to food, shelter, and healthcare?
You cant compare aexistential harm with a direct and tangible one staring you in the face. If the author is in dire straits and writing under duress, let him voice that in his own defense when he is called to account. But preemptively forgiving bad behavior on a remote “maybe” is a recipe for the end of civilization.
The author is a senior resident at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Writing isn’t even his profession. He’s a doctor.
Why not both?
Let’s hold them all to account. Why should we give someone a pass just because they’re not part of the c-suite?
This was not written by some reach asshole. This was written by someone on the payroll of some rich asshole.
Yes! Without shared ownership over the companies we work at, we have no ownership over how our labor is used. This is why a worker owned economy is such a critical part of Marxism and why Social democracy’s attempt to achieve socialist goals through higher taxes and labor rights isn’t enough (a golden cage is still a cage.) The heart of socialism is giving people a shared ownership over their labor which means they get a voice and vote on how their labor will be used
we have no ownership over how our labor is used
You can just not work for someone like that
I’d put money on the idea that this guy is a rich asshole and actively causing harm in the field that is his profession. https://www.theatlantic.com/author/michael-rose/
They’ve also already changed the headline, presumably because that didn’t go so well. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/diabetes-medication-insulin-cost/671333/
Have you read the article? It’s about how type 2 patients, for whom insulin isn’t the best option and who make up the majority of diabetes patients could end up having to use insulin because it’s cheaper.
“In place of capping the out-of-pocket cost of just insulin, lawmakers should cap the out-of-pocket cost of all diabetes medications.”
Sounds like a shit title and introduction then.
A lot of type two patients need to manage their diets better. You wouldn’t believe the number of people who just keep eating like shit.
for whom diabetes isn’t the best option and who make up the …
I guess you meant to say “insulin is not the best option”? Because diabetes seems like a shit option all around.
Shhh, now come and sweep yourself under that nice little carpet.
Better than having nothing which is the current situation.
I think the point is that insurances might not pay for the better options as willingly as they do now if there’s a cheaper option. But I understand too little of the US healthcare system to be completely sure.
The problems aren’t the treatments, the problems are still the assholes pricing the treatments that exacerbate issues with treatment affordability and selection.
Hmm, who is this Rose fellow?
Michael Rose is a senior resident in internal medicine and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
The only person The Atlantic could find to peddle this shit isn’t even allowed to practice medicine without supervision? lmao
Not even an endocrine doctor. IM knows diabetic medicine because they happen to run into it a fair amount, along with a lot of other diseases from a lot of other body systems like kidney disease or COPD, but they’re not nephrologists or pulmonologists either.
What’s worse - taking diabetes medication that’s somewhat outdated, or taking no diabetes medication at all?
I’m not a doctor, but I bet I know the answer.
Also most of those newer treatments treat either type 2 (diet / metabolism related) or are an adjunct therapy for a type 1 (genetic) who has also developed insulin resistance over time. With or without insulin resistance a type 1 isn’t making any insulin in their pancreas at ALL and is going to need to take manufactured insulin, whether by a syringe or with an artificial pancreas that needs to be filled with an insulin cartridge. For them a metabolism altering medication isn’t going to make their pancreas start producing insulin again, it’s just going to help their cells respond better to the insulin they still have to inject.
People have gotten so used to conceptualizing diabetes as a “fat people” disease that they completely ignore the type 1 genetic diabetics who are actually the main users of insulin. Oh and most children with diabetes have type 1 (since it’s genetic) vs type 2 which can be managed with the fancier newer drugs is the “fat people” / diet related type, and most people don’t get that until they’re at least middle aged and have been eating garbage for decades. When people talk about insulin they act like they’re talking about adults who made a choice when most of your exclusively insulin dependent diabetics are gonna be type 1s who got it from genetics and have had it since childhood.
We should absolutely be caring about people regardless of these moralistic fat shaming arguments but the kind of people saying it’s not a big deal that a month of insulin costs $500 are also usually the same people crying “think of the children!” and the raw hypocrisy of that just drives me fucking bonkers.
Yes. Thank you. I have T1, and with T2 being ~20 times as common, I don’t think the difference will ever be understood by the public. I wish it would get a different name, though that wouldn’t lower the price of insulin, right.
same here. If type 1’s dont take insulin they die, period. Symptom onset is fast and its not a pleasant or fast death. All the type1s rationing insulin are cooking their organs and in some stage of the process of dying, and they feel it happening. The only option is to not eat any food at all and hope you can make the process of dying stretch out a bit. But as soon as you eat, the food turns to glucose (sugar) in the blood, your body cant use that sugar without insulin and it acidifies in your blood and cooks you.
YoU jUsT hAvE To WaTcH yOuR DiEt
-them probably
yOu juSt hAve To cuT swEetS, maYBe tRY tHe CArniVorE DieT
- them actually
Other times they’ll just advise you to use honey, because they think that’s not sugar.
Michael Rose
I hope these motherfuckers and their apologists die.
Luigi doing it! And now u can do…
Is that Tony Hawk why does that look like Tony Hawk
No lmfao that’s Tim Robinson 😂😂😂😂
Too soon?
Not soon enough.
No
So you offer the newer, better treatments for free, right? Right???
That’s the neat part, you don’t.
Except if diabetics had cheap safe access to insulin none of them would die…………
The point it seems like they are trying to make (and I have only read up till the paywall) is that there are multiple forms of insulin, and newer versions basically work better. Many people are getting the newer, better drugs, but having to ration them because of how expensive they are. If plain, old insulin becomes cheap enough such that people switch to it (critically, without some extra effort by our healthcare system), a percentage of people will end up dying. Managing diabetes is all about keeping blood glucose stable, and that is asier to do with the modern stuff.
They retitled the article to “Making Insulin Cheaper Isn’t Enough”, which i think is a much better headline.
And again, I could only read up till the paywall, so i could be giving them too much credit.
The old forms of insulin (R, NPH) are already cheap and available at Walmart without a prescription. They are only $25 a vial, but suck to use though. Pretty sure they’re referring to the metabolic drugs given to people with type 2.
The fact they changed the headline is itself praiseworthy, but the fact it was click bait and sensationalist to begin counters it.
The point about making the older stuff cheaper is something that isn’t mentioned as much as it should be in these debates.
Ultimately even if the older stuff is worse and requires more attention and monitoring (less convenient), it is still better than nothing.
Someone posted a link to the full text. Looks like their main point is that for most people with diabetes (who have type 2), insulin of any form isn’t the best first line treatment, things like glp-1 receptor agonists (e.g., ozempic) work way better, but since it’s not “insulin” it’s not covered.
I’m guessing the editors of the Atlantic gave it the original bad headline, cause it seems like the author is genuine.
So the physician cares about patient wellbeing while the newspaper cares about engagement? Sounds about right
I didn’t have a paywall for some reason, so here’s the gist of it:
Insulin is only the first choice for type 1 diabetes. For type 2, there are alternatives (not just variants of insulin, but actually different drugs) with fewer side effects, and which are more effective against the serious dangers like heart attacks. But when insulin gets much cheaper, those patients (i.e. the majority of diabetes patients) could end up using insulin and run a higher risk of those more deadly symptoms. Towards the end, the article even says: “In place of capping the out-of-pocket cost of just insulin, lawmakers should cap the out-of-pocket cost of all diabetes medications.”
Maybe that would motivate pharmaceutical companies to work on treatments that actually cure diabetes?
Seems like are breakthrough treatments we are getting over recent years is just to manage the sickness.
“Making Insulin Cheaper Isn’t Enough” sounds like a good headline on its own, but with the context of the original headline and tagline, it sure sounds like the rest of the article is going to be making point for not making insulin cheaper at all.
Maybe there is a real call to action buried past the paywall, but I don’t see it, and therefore I can only assume that what I can see without paying is the message they want to push.
Someone posted a link to the full text. Looks like their main point is that for most people with diabetes (who have type 2), insulin of any form isn’t the best first line treatment, things like glp-1 receptor agonists (e.g., ozempic) work way better, but since it’s not “insulin” it’s not covered.
I’m guessing the editors of the Atlantic gave it the original bad headline, cause it seems like the author is genuine.
That makes more sense, I suppose.
Still seems like an odd article choice since type 1 and 2 diabetes are totally separate diseases with different causes and treatments. So of course reducing insulin prices won’t do anything to help type 2 diabetics.
That’s true, t1 and t2 are basically opposite conditions with some overlapping effects. A significant portion of people with type 2 do use insulin, though.
No. Idiot. Only the capitalist class can construct hypothetical scenarios.
If diabetics get insulin for free they’d become dependent and require it for the rest of their lives. It’s safer to just let them die or leave them homeless because they have to spend all their money on it.
/s
Any society which holds “your money or your life” as a valid argument is not one which should exist.
