KjellBlog

This week I took care of a patient with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes (also called juvenile onset diabetes ie you need to take insulin for the rest of your life or you will die.)  It is tough news to take for a healthy 20-something that they need to start checking their blood sugar 4 times a day with a fingerstick and then inject themselves with insulin before every single meal. To make things worse, he had recently been laid off from his job as a server at a renowned bay area restaurant.  This would not have been a drastic problem for the average healthy young person, but type 1 diabetes requires expensive medicines and frequent doctor's visits.  Under the current health care system, their is not a reasonable solution to this problem.  It is frustrating, absurd, and frankly, total bullshit. People with legitimate medical problems should not have their care compromised by job layoffs, financial struggles, etc. We basically had to tell him to either convince his parents to buy him health insurance with cash (sometimes costing more than a grand a month, not to mention that preexisting conditions aren't covered) or to go out and find a new job that provides insurance. Basically, here is some insulin, now go find a job as quickly as you can. Oh, and if you can't, you're SOL.