MANCHESTER, N.H. – On Friday, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) joined a group of experts on diabetes and New Hampshire families impacted by the mental and financial cost of diabetes at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Clinic to discuss the topic of diabetes in the leadup to the introduction of a proposed bill in the Senate next week.
That bill, spearheaded by Shaheen and Susan Collins (R-ME), aims to reduce insulin prices, seeking to integrate parts of a comparable bill that passed the House earlier this year with more bipartisan elements that will allow it to get the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster in the Senate.
During Friday’s roundtable, Shaheen sought stories and information of the challenges faced by those in attendance she could share with colleagues back in Washington.
Representatives from Dartmouth Health shared that they now have 600 patients with Type 1 diabetes at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth (CHaD), and are averaging one new family coping with the diagnosis each week.
Unlike Type 2 diabetes, which arises during adulthood where patients can still produce some insulin in their bodies, Type 1 diabetes impacts children who are no longer able to produce insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar.
Other spokespeople from the hospital expressed frustration with shifting and complicated guidelines from insurance companies that make it overwhelming for elderly people with diabetes who often see their medications changed without warning when insurance companies receive notice that different medicines may prove more effective than those the elderly people have become accustomed to.
Additional frustration toward insurance companies was shared by family members impacted by diabetes such as Amy Brady, mother of Lily Brady. When Lily was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2017 at the age of five, Amy found herself with an initial $1,500 out-of-pocket cost for everything she would need for Lily’s treatment, not including insulin. Now, a 90-day supply of non-insulin costs for Lily comes to $8,293.93.
Lily told those assembled that her grandmother died last year at the age of 69 in part due to her diabetes and her rationing of insulin, also sharing her mother’s frustration with the inability to obtain improved insulin pumps as well as continually having to proof that she has diabetes even though there is no known cure.
“We need to educate the insurance people,” said Lily.
Shaheen, who shared with the group that her granddaughter also has Type 1 diabetes, said at current rates that one in three Americans will have diabetes by 2050. She also expressed frustration that Medicare covers hospital visits related to diabetes, but not diabetes-related preventative care or savings from eliminating complications brought on by insulin rationing. Shaheen hoped that in the final Congressional Budget Office fiscal analysis of the bill she is introducing will account for the savings in preventative care along with any costs.
The House bill, known as the Affordable Insulin Now Act, did receive support from 12 Republicans along with all Democrats, but found opposition from other Republicans who felt a price cap did not address factors that impact the price of producing insulin.