A Cheap Disease

At first diagnosis, my type I diabetes was a cheap disease. Two $20 vials of over the counter insulin and a couple of dozen 5 cent syringes and a $35 box of test strips would last me all month.

Today I'm on an insulin pump, using insulin I cannot legally buy over the counter (read: expensive), along with real-time glucose monitoring sensors. The total cost, not my share, but what my employer and I pay, is $1,395 per month. This figure is just for supplies, and doesn't include my "mandatory minimum" 5 endocrinologist visits so I can get prescriptions filled.

This cost is already more than the premium SMUD and I pay for medical insurance for my family. That means that every doctor's visit and prescription by any other family member is effectively being paid by other insurance premium payers, and every visit I make for anything else wrong with me is also subsidized by you.

For that, I say thank you. In fact, I am a permanent drain on your finances, one more reason on top of fifty thousand other reasons health care costs are rising at a double digit rate year over year, ad infinitium. My expectation for quality medical services is high and I expect not to have to pay for those services. I haven't yet...why should my expectations change? In fact, my expectation is that my future diabetic care will be even better than today, thrice as expensive, and I expect you, the healthy, to fund all of it.

Thank God, thank our merciful God above, that I've got medical insurance that others are paying for. Thank God I've got a cheap disease.