Category: Diabetes

Why you shouldn’t be happy with $137 insulin

Eli Lilly and Co. recently announced with some fanfare that it was manufacturing a generic version of its own best-selling insulin brand, Humalog, which it would sell for half off — $137.35 versus about $275. David Ricks, the chief executive of Lilly, …

A patient’s tale of type 2 diabetes

Samuel was an English gentleman hailing from London. Close to 10 percent of the U.S. population, over 30 million people, lives with diabetes. Five years ago, Samuel was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Taking lisinopril and glipizide, he also goes on ho…

Endocrinologists are needed more than ever. Why are they being devalued?

I chose endocrinology to be my lifelong profession out of love for the complex interactions of endocrine glands and intricate feedback loops. I take pride in preventing medical complications, prolonging life expectancy, and providing complex care to ty…

A medical educator’s poignant epiphany

For a long time, I didn’t feel as if I were getting any older. Because I’ve been at my institution since 1975, I’ve always been surrounded by the people who educated me. Though my teachers and mentors have undoubtedly aged, to me, none of them seems mu…

Readers And Tweeters Parse Ideas — From Snakebites To Senior Suicide

Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.

Many diseases represent an arbitrary number

A wag once said: “There is no such thing as a healthy person, just one who has not had enough tests.” As we make every minor deviation from the average into a disease, that jest is becoming uncomfortably close to the way our current medical system beha…

Diabetic Amputations A ‘Shameful Metric’ Of Inadequate Care

In California, people who are black or Latino are more than twice as likely as whites to undergo amputations related to diabetes, a Kaiser Health News analysis found. The pattern is not unique to California.

Is Insulin’s High Cost Keeping Diabetes Patients From Taking Their Medicine?

An estimated 1.25 million Americans have Type 1 diabetes and cannot live without insulin. Sen. Kamala Harris’ claim that 1 in 4 diabetes patients cannot afford their insulin is a shockingly high number, so we decided to dig into the sparse data.

MKSAP: 62-year-old woman with hypertension

Test your medicine knowledge with the MKSAP challenge, in partnership with the American College of Physicians. A 62-year-old woman is evaluated during a routine examination. She feels well and has no exercise limitations. Medical history is significant…

How diabetes education programs can help busy primary care physicians

Busy primary care physicians have a lot on their plates. But when it comes to helping people with diabetes learn how to improve their health, they don’t have to do it all themselves. Diabetes self-management education and support (DSMES) programs, led …