March 26, 2014

Urgent: Arizona - Read Catherine's Piece at ASweetLife

Access to quality care is the path to saving money on the ballooning costs of diabetes care. That is because the real money is gets spent when things go wrong, just consider the ER costs for insulin overdose.

Arizona has an issue with pumps. Apparently there are other states with or considering other such "savings." Investing in quality care, tools and the education needed to use them, is the path to reducing the astronomical cost of complications. Teaching a kid to use a pump and then taking them off it at a age 21 ins a recipe for serious bad outcomes like potentially fatal overdosing of insulin.

Here what Catherine sent in an email:

Yesterday it came to my attention that Arizona's legislature is currently - as in right this moment - in the process of deciding whether to approve a budgetary amendment that would restore insulin pump coverage for the state's adult insulin-dependent Medicaid recipients. (Currently once you turn 21, AZ's Medicaid won't cover your pump, no matter how crucial it is for your care.) If you are transitioning of a pump you know well and on to MDI you most unlikely are preoccupied and least likely to have time advocate for yourself.  And AZ is one of  only two states - other than Alabama - not to provide this coverage.
I am trying to get people from all corners of the DOC to ask their twitter followers to send tweets to the relevant AZ politicians (and journalists) TODAY to encourage them to include this amendment in the House version of the AZ budget. These should be encouraging tweets, not disparaging (at least not at this point!), lest we hurt this budding chance at an amendment the AZ's house..
Can you guys help? I wrote a blog post at ASweetLife with more details (and the relevant twitter handles & email addresses) here:


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