#deductible

Uh-oh.

Well, I went to CVS and got a covid test, but it came back negative. This same exact thing happened to me in early 2021; I got deathly sick for two weeks and lost my sense of smell, but every single test I took came back negative. Home test, negative. Pharmacy kiosk test, negative. Different pharmacy drive thru test, negative. I still have no clue what I had back then because I had no insurance and couldn't afford to go to the doctor. My mom thinks I have a sinus infection, but even though I have insurance this year, it's the cheapest plan on the market, covering next to nothing, so I still can't afford to get checked out. I wouldn't trust a doctor anyway because every single one I've seen in the last 10 years has been a quack who just wanted to wring money out of me; tests I didn't need, follow-up appointments that cost a hundred dollars just for them to tell me they weren't gonna do anything that day and I needed ANOTHER follow-up in a week, they would draw blood and then do nothing with it until it "expires" then ask to draw more, money money money money money- the United States healthcare system is a con, a racket, a scam, rotten to the very core by capitalism. Doctors don't want people to get better, they want people to keep coming back to give them more money! It's like tech companies making their products shitty in purpose so they break and you have to buy more, doctors give shitty care so you have to follow-up. There's no incentive for them to cure peoole, it's a subscription model!

People have a right to their lives. Those with diabetes need insulin to survive. And insulin today can cost upwards of $1,000 or more per month, far more than many people’s rent prices, far more than almost anybody can afford.

The proliferation of high-deductible insurance plans makes insulin unattainable for those who make even a decent living. (For those of you who are young or don’t understand insurance, the deductible is what you have to pay out-of-pocket before your insurance plan starts to pay.) Some deductibles are as high as $5,000 or $7,000 per year. And when insulin vials cost hundreds and hundreds out of pocket, when you can’t even make enough to put away a decent savings, insurance with deductibles that high essentially become useless.

This is killing people. Without access to insulin, those with diabetes can quickly spiral and succumb to diabetic ketoacidosis, which is when “Your blood sugar gets so high that your blood becomes highly acidic, your cells dehydrate, and your body stops functioning.”