December 1, 2010

This War Must Be Fought!

Normally I would wait to post this, but this demands action now!

This war is with the government and our ill advised bureaucracy that is out to kill people with chronic diseases, namely diabetes. This would otherwise be called Medicare. And we all know this means that the insurance companies will follow this lock-step.

For the background of what is going on, please take time to read the post of December 1, 2010 by Lee Dubois. I know others will be writing about this also. Take time to read his blog now and then come back. I know that your blood pressure will go up, and hopefully you remembered to take your medication last night.

It is bad enough that we have to fight for every test strip that we can get and ask our doctors to go to bat for us to get a few extra strips, but to have medicare dictate that we will only be allowed one test strip if you are on oral medications and three if on insulin it totally out of line and could be fatal for some. We all need to test if we think we might be having an episode of hypoglycemia.

What is so frightening is this time your doctor will not be able to argue for you. This will be the rule and no exceptions will be allowed. It is bad enough that these decisions are not up for public comment before being enforced, but to ram this down our throats is totally unconscionable.

Therefore - call the Congressional Switchboard at 1-866-220-0044. If you give them your zip code they’ll connect you with your Senator’s office. Each Senator apparently has a Healthcare Liaison. Give that person an earful. I lifted this from Lee's blog and I hope that this is acceptable because of the need to do this.

I would also suggest that you email your senators at this link and make the subject attention the Healthcare Liaison. In the first sentence get their attention by stating that Medicare has overstepped their boundaries or wording to this effect.

Do this now and don't wait. Also contact any friends that you know might support you and have them do this as well.

Diabetes Awareness Month Ended

I am not sad to say good bye to this month. Some good projects were started, but at the same time a lot of money was flushed down the drain not benefiting anyone with diabetes and certainly not educating the general public.

What we need is a year-round effort to put diabetes education front and center to the nation and the world. We don't need anymore wasting money on blue lights and the electricity that lit them. This money could have been better spent on some one page advertisements (or even half-page ads) explaining the difference between the types of diabetes and educating a lot more people than lighting a few buildings.

While many people liked seeing the buildings lighted in blue, the people that understood the meaning were those that already know much of the differences between the types of diabetes. They also know about diabetes because they have this disease.

Therefore, I would like to challenge my fellow bloggers to think seriously about finding out whether their local newspapers accept columns written by them about diabetes. Some will even put them in the health section while others will put them on the opinion page. Most local newspapers will not pay for this, but this should not stop you from trying to educate their readers.

My local paper accepts letters to the editor or columns written for the Health section. After the new year, I will be submitting a monthly column for the Health section. While this will not bring me any money, at least I feel that I will be able to help educate people about diabetes in my small corner of the world.

November 29, 2010

Diabetes' civil war

This is the Chicago Tribune's attempt to stir the pot.  These people had to know when they gave permission to be quoted what the subject of the article was. If I were these people, I would not want to brag about this.

Others are a little more relaxed in their view and for this I am thankful. Check out this blogger and the links he shows, for a little more balanced view.  Note: the link in the last sentence has been broken.

This deserves no more discussion.