Diabetics risking life and limb amid recession

More MSM bulls**t.

"Diabetics are increasingly risking life and limb by cutting back on — or even going without — doctor visits, insulin, medicines and blood-sugar testing as they lose income and health insurance in the recession, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Doctors have seen a drop in regular appointments with diabetic patients, if they come back at all. Patients more often seek tax-subsidized or charity care. And they end up in emergency rooms more often, patients and physicians said in interviews.

Sales of top-selling drugs and other products used to treat and monitor the disease have dropped since the economic crisis accelerated last fall, the AP analysis found. There are even signs that some patients are choosing less-expensive insulin injections over pricier pills to save money."

Type 2 diabetes, the more common form of diabetes, is fat person diabetes.

Here is the poster child for the article:



These fatsos risked life and limb by getting fat when times were not so lean.

Now they are risking nothing.

And it did not happen overnight.

Here are the pudgy fingers of the poster child:



They developed their disease of choice by choice.

Too f-ing bad.

"Patients' frugality comes at a tremendous cost to the already-strained health care system. The typical monthly bill to treat diabetes runs $350 to $900 for those without insurance, a price tag that's risen as newer, more expensive medicines have hit the market. Emergency care and a short hospitalization can easily top $10,000, and long-term complications can cost far more.

M. Eileen Collins, 48, of Indianapolis, tried to scrimp on her medication last fall after her husband lost his job and with it their insurance. Without money for insulin, test supplies and other medicines, she asked for free samples and also got a few drugs through $4-a-month generic programs. But she stopped taking most of her drugs and cut her insulin doses in half to stretch her budget."

Well, most likely too f-ing bad for the rest of us who were calorically responsible, as you can expect that we will be called upon to pay to rescue these irresponsible pigs who should have scrimped on money spent for Calories.

"Getting patients to stick to their treatment has long been tough."

And whose fault is that?

If they want relief, then stick to the plan. (and not Bob Greene's and AdipOprah's)

If not, well, better it cost them an arm and a leg, than it cost the rest of us an arm and a leg.

Sometimes actions have consequences.

In the matter of overweight/obesity, this is one of them.

And until these irresponsible people have an opportunity to experience the consequences, they will not change.

"'There's an increase in just overall consequences of diabetes: losing a foot, losing a kidney, bad eyesight. At least six people come to mind over the last six months ... most because of the recession,' said Dr. Nicholas Vasquez, who works in one of the country's biggest ERs, at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix.

Vasquez and his colleagues view the desperate patients in their ER as harbingers of what's to come if the recession deepens.

'What we're seeing mostly is the first steps of people not taking care of their diabetes and starting to have consequences,' he said."

Let's hope so.

And let's hope that a lesson will be learned that will result in change for the better.

And that lesson is not to have the rest of us support the calorically ill-behaved.