That’s it, I’m moving to Hungary!
Yes, I feel very lucky, Gerri (and I don’t pay any premium). When I left, they were talking about raising the retirement requirement to 20 years though the union will probably only allow 10. I always have trouble explaining to people that I returned from Guatemala in part because I paid so much more for my meds there; they are definitely cheaper and you don’t need prescriptions for anything but not as cheap as using my insurance.
I definitely don’t want to start the health care reform debate again, but it is very clear from comparing the U.S. to other countries that something has to give, especially for people like us with chronic conditions!
Because the pharma companies assume we all have insurance, and don’t notice how much they charge. Its the same mind game as the income tax. You see, they take the tax out of our check before we get it, and you would not believe how many people just don’t know how much it really amounts to. If we had to write a check every month for our income tax, instead of having it stolen up front, I believe the income tax would be repealed in six months. Its all about mind games and huge profits.
You don’t want to even think about it. Still, I am not gonna stand up in favor of that piece of trash legislation our Senate is trying to force down our throats, since that won’t reduce any costs of any kind.
The ironic thing is that in the free market, when demand goes up, prices go down, but in the government regulated market, when demand goes up, so does the price. Fascinating society we have created here…
John
Got room:)
When you study economics, insulin is always given as the example of a good with perfectly inelastic demand (i.e. we will buy it no matter what the price is). This is an example of a market failure. So I guess the market alone will not be enough to solve insulin supply and demand issues.
But I love a good health care debate (as most of your know by now), so feel free to join the debate by joining this group.
We try to keep the debate there … so that those who are interested can talk about and those who are not don’t need to 
While you are ALL welcome to come and live on the couch and floor of our one room apartment (a never ending slumber party), I should warn you that in order to be in the system, you have to pay 7% of your income. There is NO free lunch. But in the end it is a system that I’m happy with 
Still seems very fair. At this point in my life…re-engineering myself (doctorate)…it is fairly low:) Is the 7% an additional tax on their yearly income tax?? How does it work. Are you going to be in Hungary for the holidays?? Take care and have a great Christmas.
I use Novolog $200.00 for pack of 5 pens and Lantus 180.00 for a pack of 5 pens for a box of the needles it is $40.00. With my insurance I have to pay for my medication up front and then send in the receipt and I get reimburse but I have been lucky that I found a pharmacy that will send my medication in the mail and then bill my insurance for me…
I have been a Type 1 Diabetic for 31 years, live in New York and Walmart sells Novolin for under $25.00, other stores like Cvs, Walgreens are over $72.00, Diabetes would have been cured years ago if they didn't make so much money off our disease. I always thought a Country was stronger healthier people but I as a Type 1 Diabetic don't matter to the goverment in the U.S., just so you know insulin has paid for many drugs for others, everytime lily raises the prices they say its so other drugs will be cheaper - when 10% of the population is Type 2 Diabetics they get away with screwing the Diabetic over. Americans say they don't want socialized medicine, but some of us are sponged for the other Meds to be made, its all B.S. and Drug companies arent going under so why do Diabetics pay for it if others in the U.S. dont.
Agree David. I remember paying $24/$25 dollars (still have the receipt) for Novolog in the early 90's. Now it is around $145/vial if you do not have insurance. I was hoping for universal healthcare...will see how the Affordable Care Act implementation works out. I used the tool online to calculate my assumed costs and I was quoted $85/mo for insurance. Questions remain about what that insurance will actually cover.
Hi Patricia! I look forward to reading about your experience as a person with diabetes and the Affordable Care Act. $85/month sounds like a good quote. It's cheaper than what I pay but I've been very lucky with my access to good and affordable medical care.
I hope you keep us updated with your experience as the calendar moves into 2014 and beyond. There's been a lot of contentious hype surrounding this issue; I'll be very interested to the actual facts experienced by a member of this community.
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In Minnesota, it costs $185 for a 10ml bottle of Novolog, and $135 for a bottle of Humalog at Walgreens. ($270 = 2 bottles of Humalog/month. It costs $52 for 50 One Touch Ultra test strips. ($208 = 4 boxes/month). Medtronic Reservoirs, and Infusion sets ($228 = 1 box of each). Without including cost of doctor visits, lab work, or cost of insulin pump, $706/month. I have medical assistance, but often paperwork gets lost, or system failure and I show no coverage, and have to wait for it to get sorted out, several times, I've waited in comas for it to get sorted out. Other times when I've had no coverage I've been given somebodies dead relatives supplies, or once got insulin and pump supplies from a friend that got a transplant and didn't need them anymore. One time, I applied for a charity fund from a church and got a 3 month supply. I've also applied for care packages from medtronic and got expired recalled supplies, and also Lilly once sent me expired insulin. I think one of the saddest thing about being diabetic is the cost, and I wonder what does it really cost to keep a diabetic alive? I think we are some pretty sweet people, and worth it to keep us alive. I gave a testimony for TakeAction Minnesota a couple years ago, about my trials and tribulations having and maintaining coverage for diabetic supplies, the comas I'd been in, the effect it had on my kids, and family, I spoke to those making the decisions for MN about the health care reform, and listened to these decision makers talk about stuff regarding each state and what these plans would look like over x amount of time, it all just really freaked me out and raised my blood sugar. The woman that brought me to speak my testimony said, ya know it would be just really great if you went into a coma and died, and that would really prove our point, and you would help so many people for the future with medical assistance and transition to Obama care. I said, find another poster child, I'm on a mission to stay alive. This is just sad, and many like me that fall thru the cracks, I'm glad to hear of some better programs to help diabetics get the supplies and meds that they need. A cure would be better, and yet often my only interest in a cure for diabetes is to save the cost of being diabetic, and sadly, I wonder if it would have been better to go into a coma and die, if that would have helped more people than I am able to as a self-employeed small business owner of a Chinese Medicine clinic, which by the way can't cure T1 diabetes, and so far isn't making enuf to buy insulin or pump supplies, I just feel sad, and many of my colleuges think I am bitter and angry because after graduation, paying for medical board exams, license fees, malpractice and clinic liability insurance, borrowing money to set up a clinic because there were no jobs in the field that I spent 10 years in school for, $100 thousand in student loans, was a transition they said... I should have known better when I started. Come to think of it, if I had known being a diabetic was going to be so challenging, I just wouldn't have done that at age 8 either. Gosh, there is nothing so bitter as the taste of sweet surrender. I am not just angry, I am outraged at the cost of a bottle of insulin these days!
I pay a fee of 2040 NOK(currently 346 USD) per year for everything related to doctors visit and medicine, including diabetes supplies and insulin. The rest of the cost is provided for by the government.
No insurance needed.
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If I lost health insurance, I think I'd be buying the older insulins over the counter for $25/10ml vial at Walmart, and begging any doctor I see for levemir (or lantus) samples when/if I visit, while I desperately try and make my remaining CGM (Dexcom) sensors last for 4-6 weeks a piece. Oh and I'd quit using a pump, but I've been doing MDI and just recently went on an Omnipod, so it wouldn't be a big adjustment going back.
Oh, and regarding tests strips, there are decent generic glucose meters around with test strips that run $10-12 for 50.
Today I went to Health Partners Pharmacy to ask on insulin cost. Novolog,10ml vial = $186.65, Humalog = $186.54
Went to Walgreens which is where I go to fill my Rx, what I quoted before was from 6 months ago, Novolog went from $185 to $194.99, and Humalog went from $135 to $199.30. And one touch ultra strips went from $52 to $77.99.
Across the street from Walgreens at Cub Food Pharm - Novolog = $177.69, Humalog = $180.69, one touch strips = $77.99.
Usually when I'm checking prices, it is because I don't have insulin, and my medical assistance has been postponed or disapproved, and that's when with a bg over 1000, headache, vomiting, muscle spasms, and thinking, could I just jump back there and quick grab a bottle out of the fridge and run. Doubt I'd get very far.
I also asked today about R and NPH, thinking, if I don't have MA next month maybe I could go off the pump, and back on R and N, $91.98 each bottle, but I don't know what amount I would use or how to switch back to these and syringe from pump. I do save my Humalog bottles, that last wee bit in the bottle that isn't enuf to fill a cartridge, and isn't very effective, so I would scrape the bottle, getting what I could out with a syringe and filling as much into one bottle, and see how long I could go on that,,, I've done it before, it tided over for a few weeks, up to a month. Or go to my friends house, who is also limited to exactly what he needs each month by Rx on MA insurance, and ask him for a hit, we have the same pump, same reservoirs, insertion sites and same insulin, so he just twists his insertion off, attaches it to mine, and hits me with a manual bolus, ah nuts, I can't believe these things are things I've done. There was a movie I think called "Time", each person was given a certain amount of time, the clock started at age 18, and when time was up, the person died,,, I have often felt like that, when I fill my last cartridge with the last of the insulin in the bottle, and have no idea how or when I will get another bottle of insulin, and the pump starts to beep how much time remaining, how many units left.
I am so grateful to have 2 un-opened bottles of insulin in my fridge, so thankful to have a fridge, and plenty of reservoirs and insertion sites, an organic bowl of soup, an organic raw kombucha drink, and I hope everyone that needs it has insulin and way to inject it, good foods non-GMO that prob is why so many type 2, and days like this, when I have 2 bottles of insulin, I feel so rich, so blessed, and maybe I have a little cookie, or triple hot fudge sundae with a gooey brownie, 5 slices of pizza, a hot dog, a hamburger, but I am so kidding, I don't eat like that,,, but seriously, I was told once by a pharmacist, that informed me my MA insurance was showing inactive in the computer, that people like me sucking off the system, pushing costs of insurance up, living off others peoples hard earned tax dollars, coming in begging for insulin just to go eat the crappy foods that gave me diabetes in the first place, I threw up all over Walgreens floor, then went and took one of four Chinese Medical Board Exams, it had already been scheduled a month earlier, and late cancel would cost another $300 to test. First question was, Patient is a 12 year old T1 Diabetic, diagnosed last month, what do you tell him?
A)Failure to control your blood sugar will result in blindness. B) Failure to test bg and control your blood sugar will result in kidney failure. C)Failure to take insulin and manage your blood sugar will result in neuropathy and limb loss. D)All of the Above.
Sorry, I write so much when I post, I think I have post traumatic stress and a severe insulin addiction. I hoped to enter the exchange come 2014, but I think there will be some sort of medical assistance extension that I may qualify for, as I continue to grow my business, and start earning an income that previously would have had me overqualified for medical assistance, yet not enuf or unable to get private insurance.
Elizabeth, your post was 4 years ago, so I wonder how you are doing today?
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Try Walmart… R and N for $25 a vial.
I checked ebay for strips, insulin, pump supplies, nothing there except ink pens from companies, I looked on craigslist for my area, and found so much for sell, insulin, strips, pump supplies, pumps, whoa, people selling insulin, pump supplies remaining from dead relatives, people selling because they had been switched to different brand of insulin, one guy selling pump supplies because 'cost of living had become too much and he was going off the pump'. I replied to an add for 7 bottles of Humalog for $200. That is the cost of one bottle if I went to Walgreens to buy it out of pocket. You don't need an Rx to buy insulin, only if having and billing to insurance. So that's changed from last year, when I didn't have insurance, and borrowed money from a friend to go buy a bottle at Walgreens, and they would not sell it to me, because I didn't have a current Rx. That time, I called my doctor, who I hadn't seen in awhile because no insurance to go see him, a doc visit, $2-300, add labwork, I don't know how much out-of-pocket? My doc renewed my Rx, and also told me to come by the office and he gave me a couple bottles of insulin. Thing is about not having insurance, and applying for any medical funding programs, is the paperwork, and time, to verify the paperwork, and correct the paperwork, and find the lost paperwork, and how many days can a diabetic live without insulin? Also, if applying for medical assistance, the paperwork, the waiting for approval, the paperwork to appeal denials, ect. I've heard of some clinics in the city that you can walk-in, no appoint, and say your medical emergency and maybe get a bottle of insulin, but that means,,, taking a day off work, losing that income, also going to welfare office to apply for MA, means taking time off work, losing income. It's just crazy, one month I was a few dollars over income to get MA, the extra $2 was not enuf to cover the over the counter cost of insulin and supplies, so here again, I might have this situation coming up, and so I got excited to check Craig's list,,, and I replied to the post to buy 7 bottles of Humalog for $200, skip paying my phone and car payment, and prevent that time inbetween paperwork and applications and waiting for approval or denial of MA, or establishing another medical insurance. However, the folks replied to the email, saying that they found out it is illegal to sell insulin on Craigs list and they are not selling the insulin, it is sad to think that someone who needs it to stay alive, while it possibly will just go to the trash. It and is sad that ppl who do need it are selling the last bit of it, and going off the pump, to afford other costs of living, like feeding, clothing, and sheltering their kids. It is just a sad situation! With a lot of false hope for changes, and temporary solutions to permanent problems. It's not just diabetics who go thru this, my heart is breaking, my arm pits are crying, and I am hoping to see change, and doing my best to become that change, off to clinic I go, to provide acupuncture and herbs to people seeking better ways, ways to get off pharmaceutical drugs, and OTC medications... there is always a way, in all ways, seek the solution, and keep on going, even if I can't solve it today, I feel some strength and encouragement by reading all the posts here, I feel less alone, and want to say, thank you :)
I just bought insulin. For a package of five pen cartridges (1500 units) of Apidra it cost me $3.35 with provincial/Great West Life coverage. But the full cost would have been $58.40 if I'd had to pay the entire cost myself.