Laverty faces a health care problem unique to many millennials with Type 1 diabetes whove been booted off their parents stable health insurance. The price of insulin, the drug that keeps them alive, tripled in the US from 2002 to 2013 and a recent study found that, from 2012 to 2016, its average annual cost increased from $3,200 to $5,900.
Thats an impossible price tag for a generation still feeling the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and saddled with massive student loan debt and increasing housing costs. ... The result is these young adults are rationing, stockpiling, and turning to the black market for the medication they need to stay alive incredibly risky and desperate measures that could result in long-term harm or death.
About 1.25 million Americans have Type 1 diabetes, a disorder where the immune system attacks the pancreas and interferes with the bodys ability to absorb energy from food.
People with Type 1 diabetes are dependent on multiple types of insulin to survive, because the disease shuts down the pancreass ability to produce the chemical, which regulates the amount of sugar in the blood. Without insulin, cells cannot absorb sugar, and the body is forced to rapidly break down fat cells to use as a backup fuel source. This dehydrates the body, turns the blood acidic, and leads to a life-threatening complication called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA).
Most people with Type 1 diabetes take at least two types of insulin: a long-acting type taken daily that constantly releases insulin, and a short-acting or rapid-acting type, taken either before or after eating. The amount of insulin a person with Type 1 diabetes needs varies dramatically depending on age, weight, food eaten, exercise, illness, stress, and, for women, if they are menstruating or ovulating.
All that medication is pricey. Laverty said that in 2017, his insulin cost him approximately $950 a month without his parents insurance coverage. So he began to ration. He gave himself only what he could afford to buy, the bare minimum he needed to function.
I was taking half of my medication that I needed to be taking, he said.
Laverty began skipping meals so he wouldnt have to use a dose of his fast-acting insulin, and he lowered the amount of insulin in every injection he gave himself. The effects were immediate. His energy levels dropped, leaving him irritable and fatigued and in a constant state of discomfort. He couldnt sleep, he was always thirsty, and he constantly had to urinate.
It definitely affected my ability to function, he said. He lived like this for four months until he found full-time employment at a company that offered full medical benefits.
This sort of rationing can have serious long-term effects for people with Type 1 diabetes, Simeon Taylor, a University of Maryland School of Medicine diabetes researcher and professor, told BuzzFeed News.
You can probably avoid rapid death, he said. But you open yourself up to long-term complications like blindness, kidney failure, amputations. If youre not treating yourself optimally, youre also at greater risk for shorter-term crises.
For Nicole Smith-Holts son Alec, the situation was deadly. Alec died of DKA in 2017, one month after turning 26 and being kicked off of his mothers insurance. He couldnt afford insulin and had been rationing what little he had left.
In August, Smith-Holt testified before the US Senate about her sons story and what she called the crisis of pharmaceutical drug prices. Smith-Holt told BuzzFeed News that she has heard from far too many people with stories like Alecs. A December study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealed that 1 in 4 people with diabetes have rationed their insulin because of high costs.