I have been a diabetic since 1968 and have seen the health care diabetics receive go down the tubes in America. When I was diagnosed, we had no health insurance at all and my mom had 6 kids to take care of alone. She worked hard to just keep us with food, clothes and shelter. When I got sick, she did not have the money to take me to the hospital but their was a county health nurse that came to our house and worked with me to learn about what I needed to eat and medicine I needed to take. She taught me how to give my shots to myself. Then I went to live with my grandparents who had very little money but lots of love to share and they got help through the County Hospital and donations of office visits from their doctors. At that time Insulin was not a prescription drug. You could actually buy it over the counter. Disposable syringes were not affordable yet so my needles were sharpened and sterilized and glass syringes boiled and stored in alcohol. But we did okay. We knew little about diabetes and my urine sugars were high most of the time. Blood sugar had to be taken at the hospital or doctors office and were often not affordable for them.
People helped each other out because it was the right thing to do. You were not denied health care for being poor, old or sick. Now the money has made diabetes research better and people are supposedly living longer. But the stats, do not include the people that die each year from the complications of diabetes. It is listed as cardiac arrest or kidney disease. With the research we have now, and the diabetic products available now, we (diabetics) should all be living a longer and more prosperous life. But NO!! America now punishes people who are too young, too sick, or too old to hold down a job and pull their own weight. We no longer help the underdog to become stronger. We give to those who will not help themselves instead of those who are not able to do for themselves. People who are in need of medical care or supplies should not have to worry about how they are going to pay for them.
I have done without medical care and medicine because I couldn’t afford it and was too sick to seek it for free. There has to be an answer out there somewhere. We are proud Americans and we have done the impossible in the past. We need to make the insurance companies into non-profit organizations that employ Americans and do what insurance companies were designed to do, which is to spread the risk of being sick out among everyone. They should find the best health care for everyone, pay for our doctors and hospitals to make it cost affective, pay incentives for ideas, of saving money, to their employees on the little things that count not on diagnostics or medicines. The truth is that all men are not created equal. If it were so, kids would not die of cancer, old people would not suffer from malnutrition and my pancreas would work like a normal persons.