Its so boring, but I need to refresh on how to talk about PBMs.
It’s the worst topic of conversation.
It never makes sense to anyone.
My strategy might be to accumulate a list of resources (some of which I found ages ago) and just review them as much as possible.
Maybe if I make a list here, I will actually DO it and find some new resources. So far, this is what I have. I’m gonna try to find some stuff that’s kinda fun.
Dr. Vincent Rajkumar: Why are prescription drugs so expensive and what can we do?
Hehehehe, you can hear my low blood sugar Dexcom alarms going off during his talk. They had great audio!
I’m also supposed to find a personal story to relay. That’s tough because what type of day to day experience does ANYONE have with PBMs?
So far, all I have is that healthcare is soaking out a solid quarter of the U.S. GDP. That’s unacceptable. If medical costs are $20,000 per year, and I make $40,000 as an EMT, then medical cost are 50% of my salary. That’s min wage for a State employee here. So, my whole life is spent in an effort to get that proportion of income spent on medical costs down to as small of an amount as possible. If I make $80,000, medical cost are still 25% of my income. That’s rent. That’s a mortgage. As a diabetic, instead of buying stable housing, I buy nothing with that money.
When I talk to the old guys at work, they can’t retire because they have the same problem. It begs the question, “Am I, as a diabetic, any different than anybody else?” I don’t know the answer to that.
I want to hear from LADA , a new term I had never heard and was not sure my doctor had heard of either. My endocrinologist said three time on my first visit that “it’s not your fault” to have LADA but I do think that eating patterns and obesity can be a factor. What makes my body create antibodies to attack my pancreas?
Sounds like what you’re really asking is, “Is there anything I can do diet & weight-wise to make this go away.” The answer is, well, no. Whatever damage has been done to your insulin-producing cells is done. They don’t regenerate on their own, and the usual take is that the auto-immune response will continue to erode your insulin production. I believe there’s science indicating that the sooner you start on insulin the better to inhibit that deterioration. But LADA, insofar as it means anything (there’s a lot of gray area and the standard description does NOT fit everyone who got T1 as an adult) means that insulin production, not insulin absorption (T2) is the root of the problem.
But it’s also true that losing weight and increasing exercise is unquestionably good whichever kind of diabetes you’ve got, because it enhances your insulin sensitivity, and as the saying goes, the less you have to take the easier it is to manage.
