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This is horrfying. Shame on the atlantic for publishing that headline.
Cheaper medicine?
But at what cost???
take so hot
hot hot take
take so hot you fry an eggThis only makes sense if the new treatments are cheaper or free than insulin. Which I’d bet a body part they aren’t.
Ozempic is expensive af. Even more so than insulin.
Capitalism fixes everything, duh. Why didn’t I realize. I’m so dumb. It’s science. Apply capitalism, and bam, nuclear energy.
So you offer the newer, better treatments for free, right? Right???
That’s the neat part, you don’t.
If diabetics get insulin for free they’d become dependent and require it for the rest of their lives. It’s safer to just let them die or leave them homeless because they have to spend all their money on it.
/s
Any society which holds “your money or your life” as a valid argument is not one which should exist.
Pardon me, but, Mr Rose, can you please tell me… What fucking better treatments?
My brother is T1D and he’s been like that since his teens. Literally the only way for him to continue to live, at all, is to take insulin.
It’s times like this that make me thankful I don’t live in the USA.
But seriously, if anyone knows of a “better” treatment for type 1 diabetes, I’m all ears. I’ve been looking for something for my brother for years, and I’ve come up with jack shit.
Basically they’ve come up with insulin analogs that are faster acting, ones that are longer lasting, and even ones that “lock” themselves so they can’t be absorbed without a high enough presence of glucose
Here’s a paper comparing a bunch of them. I’m no expert and it’s a deep rabbit hole, but there are a bunch of options, each with their own trade-offs
The most significant insulin development in recent years is glucose reactive insulin.
I would argue that any development short of GRI is not significantly different than any other insulin treatment. You have to take insulin and either regulate how much insulin you take for how much sugar you consume, or regulate how much sugar you consume too match how much insulin you’re taking.
The intervals/amounts differ, even methods of administration differ, but they are not drastically different.
GRIs actually regulate blood glucose “automatically” like a pancreas would. Which makes treating diabetes with a GRI, not dissimilar to treating any other condition that requires a single dose of medication every day. You take the medicine and go about your business, not giving your condition a second thought in your day to day activities. That’s huge.
This is all well and good, however, GRIs are little more than a lab experiment at the moment. Human trials are set up begin in 2025 sometime.
So my point stands, make insulin cheap, let people live for a few more years until they can see the release of GRIs; where there is a real, tangible change in how they manage their condition.
Everything else, is just variations on the same, bad, theme.
My brother has used so many different brands and types of insulin, from long-acting to short, in vials, pen-like dispensers, and even a couple pumps… They’re all varying levels of bad. The least bad has been the pumps, but the pump isn’t dependent on what brand or type of insulin you use… It’s a tool to make it easier to manage the amount of insulin being recieved at any given time. Everything else is little more than a difference in labeling.
Michael Rose
Guys, very seriously after the whole covid scam, do you still believe in this kind of stuff? The covid was biggest wealth-transfer to rich class in whole history.
COVID is real. All crisis serves as a way to force the less wealthy of the Petite Bourgeoisie to sell off their Capital to the Haute Bourgeoisie, and in this manner furthers monopolization.
I hope these motherfuckers and their apologists die.
Too soon?
Not soon enough.
No
Luigi doing it! And now u can do…
Is that Tony Hawk why does that look like Tony Hawk
No lmfao that’s Tim Robinson 😂😂😂😂
Bullshit take. Some people ONLY respond to insulin. Fuck whoever wrote this.
I apologize if this sounds pedantic, but what if the writer was forced to write it to keep his job along with his family’s access to food, shelter, and healthcare? So rather than punch down, I say punch up. I say fuck the owners who ultimately signed off on the article and potentially demanded it in the first place. (The Atlantic is owned by Emerson Collective which is owned by billionaire Laurene Jobs. )
Why not both?
Let’s hold them all to account. Why should we give someone a pass just because they’re not part of the c-suite?
The author is a senior resident at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Writing isn’t even his profession. He’s a doctor.
what if the writer was forced to write it to keep his job along with his family’s access to food, shelter, and healthcare?
You cant compare existential harm with a direct and tangible one. If the author is in dire straits and writing under duress, let him voice that in his own defense when he is called to account. But preemptively forgiving bad behavior on a remote “maybe” is a recipe for the end of civilization.
This was not written by some rich asshole. This was written by someone on the payroll of some rich asshole.
Yes! Without shared ownership over the companies we work at, we have no ownership over how our labor is used. This is why a worker owned economy is such a critical part of Marxism and why Social democracy’s attempt to achieve socialist goals through higher taxes and labor rights isn’t enough (a golden cage is still a cage.) The heart of socialism is giving people a shared ownership over their labor which means they get a voice and vote on how their labor will be used
we have no ownership over how our labor is used
You can just not work for someone like that
I’d put money on the idea that this guy is a rich asshole and actively causing harm in the field that is his profession. https://www.theatlantic.com/author/michael-rose/
They’ve also already changed the headline, presumably because that didn’t go so well. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/diabetes-medication-insulin-cost/671333/
Except if diabetics had cheap safe access to insulin none of them would die…………
No. Idiot. Only the capitalist class can construct hypothetical scenarios.
The point it seems like they are trying to make (and I have only read up till the paywall) is that there are multiple forms of insulin, and newer versions basically work better. Many people are getting the newer, better drugs, but having to ration them because of how expensive they are. If plain, old insulin becomes cheap enough such that people switch to it (critically, without some extra effort by our healthcare system), a percentage of people will end up dying. Managing diabetes is all about keeping blood glucose stable, and that is asier to do with the modern stuff.
They retitled the article to “Making Insulin Cheaper Isn’t Enough”, which i think is a much better headline.
And again, I could only read up till the paywall, so i could be giving them too much credit.
The fact they changed the headline is itself praiseworthy, but the fact it was click bait and sensationalist to begin counters it.
The point about making the older stuff cheaper is something that isn’t mentioned as much as it should be in these debates.
Ultimately even if the older stuff is worse and requires more attention and monitoring (less convenient), it is still better than nothing.
Someone posted a link to the full text. Looks like their main point is that for most people with diabetes (who have type 2), insulin of any form isn’t the best first line treatment, things like glp-1 receptor agonists (e.g., ozempic) work way better, but since it’s not “insulin” it’s not covered.
I’m guessing the editors of the Atlantic gave it the original bad headline, cause it seems like the author is genuine.
So the physician cares about patient wellbeing while the newspaper cares about engagement? Sounds about right
I didn’t have a paywall for some reason, so here’s the gist of it:
Insulin is only the first choice for type 1 diabetes. For type 2, there are alternatives (not just variants of insulin, but actually different drugs) with fewer side effects, and which are more effective against the serious dangers like heart attacks. But when insulin gets much cheaper, those patients (i.e. the majority of diabetes patients) could end up using insulin and run a higher risk of those more deadly symptoms. Towards the end, the article even says: “In place of capping the out-of-pocket cost of just insulin, lawmakers should cap the out-of-pocket cost of all diabetes medications.”
The old forms of insulin (R, NPH) are already cheap and available at Walmart without a prescription. They are only $25 a vial, but suck to use though. Pretty sure they’re referring to the metabolic drugs given to people with type 2.
“Making Insulin Cheaper Isn’t Enough” sounds like a good headline on its own, but with the context of the original headline and tagline, it sure sounds like the rest of the article is going to be making point for not making insulin cheaper at all.
Maybe there is a real call to action buried past the paywall, but I don’t see it, and therefore I can only assume that what I can see without paying is the message they want to push.
Someone posted a link to the full text. Looks like their main point is that for most people with diabetes (who have type 2), insulin of any form isn’t the best first line treatment, things like glp-1 receptor agonists (e.g., ozempic) work way better, but since it’s not “insulin” it’s not covered.
I’m guessing the editors of the Atlantic gave it the original bad headline, cause it seems like the author is genuine.
That makes more sense, I suppose.
Still seems like an odd article choice since type 1 and 2 diabetes are totally separate diseases with different causes and treatments. So of course reducing insulin prices won’t do anything to help type 2 diabetics.
That’s true, t1 and t2 are basically opposite conditions with some overlapping effects. A significant portion of people with type 2 do use insulin, though.
Maybe that would motivate pharmaceutical companies to work on treatments that actually cure diabetes?
Seems like are breakthrough treatments we are getting over recent years is just to manage the sickness.
Funny how pharmaceutical’s motivation to cure doesn’t exist.
