The Erickson Report, Page 2: Good/Bad News: Help with medication costs

Good/Bad News: Help with medication costs

Next up, something that looks like Good News but underneath is not.

Eric Threlkeld is a technical engineer living in Utah with his wife Erica. His job requires him to travel a great deal, so he has loads of airline miles. Keep that in mind.

A little over a year ago, in December 2018, Threlkeld was shocked when Jake Balle, who he had hired as his real estate agent as he and his wife looked for a house, when Jake Balle told him that Balle and his wife Marqui fork out $6,600 a year for insulin pens for their son, Reid. Reid has type 1 diabetes, meaning his body produces little or no insulin. There is no cure and the only thing keeping 7-year-old Reid alive is the insulin delivered through a small pump attached to his abdomen.

Knowing that prescription drugs are much cheaper in Mexico, Threlkeld offered to pick up several insulin pens during his next trip there. He found them: same brand that Reid uses, same packaging, same dose, it's the same stuff, for a bit over one-tenth the cost.

In January, Threlkeld and his wife made another trip, this time on his days off, using his airline miles to pay for their flights.

Through this experience, Threlkeld and his wife learned just how great the need is. Last month they started a nonprofit, the Medic(a)tion Found(a)tion, to help people who have been affected by skyrocketing prescription medication costs. They ask people to donate money or airline miles to defray the costs of travel with the idea of having volunteers go to Mexico at least every other month to buy insulin.

And they are expanding: On their next trip they are also going to be picking up some steroid inhalers for another patient being buried under the cost of prescription medicine.

Eric and Erica Threlkeld

All of which seems like a true feel-good story about caring people seeing a need among the people in their local community and using the resources they have to try to do something about it. So why is this bad news?

Because why should they have to?

Why should anyone have to do this? Why should anyone have to go to Mexico, to leave the country, in order to find life-saving medicine at a price they can manage to pay? Why should anyone be financially crippled just trying to keep their child alive? Why should the cost of insulin have doubled over just four years so that type 1 diabetics pay on average $6000 a year? Why should any family ever have to choose between medication and the mortgage, to decide every month which do we risk this time - sickness or homelessness?

How is this even conscionable? Of course, it's not, which is why people like the Threlkelds do what they do: because it's necessary. Because people are suffering to satisfy the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. Because it is unconscionable.

And it's not going to change until and unless we make it change.