This episode is sponsored by Biocare Nutrition. Use the code HangryWoman on your next order.
Mila Clarke shared her personal experiences as a Black woman living with latent autoimmune diabetes in adults and the challenges she faces within the American healthcare system.
Despite having good healthcare coverage, she encounters difficulties obtaining necessary medical devices and filling prescriptions due to sudden coverage issues and the need for prior authorizations.
Mila’s account highlights the complexities and barriers that individuals with chronic illnesses often face when navigating the healthcare system, emphasizing the need for improved accessibility and understanding of patients’ needs.
She calls for a patient-centric system that prioritizes patient well-being over corporate interests and invites listeners to engage in a lively debate while promoting her podcast and encouraging support for her work.
Navigating Healthcare Hurdles: A Personal Journey
Introduction: Welcome to Your Diabestie Podcast
Welcome back, folks! Today, I’m diving into a topic that hits close to home: the frustrating hurdles we face in the healthcare system. As someone living with latent autoimmune diabetes in adults, I’ve had my fair share of battles with insurance, pharmacies, and paperwork. So, let’s unpack this together.
The Entrepreneurial Health Struggle
Picture this: I’m an entrepreneur, which means I’m the one footing the bill for my health insurance. Sounds empowering, right? Well, it comes with its own set of headaches. High premiums, endless paperwork, and battling for coverage—it’s a whole ordeal.
Recognizing Privilege Amidst the Struggle
Despite being a Black woman walking into a healthcare system that often doesn’t prioritize folks like me, I acknowledge my privilege. I can afford quality healthcare, at least for now. But financial instability lurks around every corner, ready to throw everything into chaos.
The Unexpected Prescription Predicament
Imagine my surprise when, I visit my endo about a month ago. And we’re getting all of my prescriptions put together. We’re getting everything kind of cleared up because he had moved offices. And so just at the time, like I was good on prescriptions, but once I saw him again earlier in January, I was like, okay, we need to like go back through all of my medication history, update all of this because it was basically attached to the new practice. And for me, it was like, okay, there’s, you know, like there’s just the sorting out that you have to do.
Dealing with Prescription Problems
Mind you, my insurance had not changed. So my insurance was exactly the same. Um, it was actually a better plan from the last time I had seen my endo. So I guess it did change, but it included more, which was the idea, which was the goal. And I, changed that plan like last June. So I’ve been rocking with this plan for a really long time, right? Longish, like at least five months before like doing all of this. So I was already spending money on prescriptions. I was already spending money on supplies.
The Frustrations Mount
I needed my tech supplies. I had just gone on an insulin patch, so I needed, those things, um, I, you know, was just kind of like reevaluating, here’s everything that I need. And so we did that. We went through, we updated my prescriptions. They’re all the same prescriptions that insurance has all the same, but somehow some way I end up put in this position where It’s like, I don’t, I wish that I could explain it to y’all. Like I go to fill all of my prescriptions with the pharmacy that I have been filling my prescriptions at for the last five months with no issues.
The Endless Battle: Ranting and Seeking Solutions
And then all of a sudden there are issues. All of a sudden an insulin that I take isn’t covered. And so I have to get on a new formulation of a concentrated insulin. All of a sudden my insulin patches require prior authorization, which they never had before. I was able to just get them, like it was covered on the formulary. I don’t know what happened. Then I tried to use a coupon And my insurance flat out was like, we don’t know how to apply this. And the pharmacy was like, we don’t know how to apply this.
Advocating for Change
That’s my rant today. And I guess the question that I pose to you is two things. One, do you ever have to deal with this and what is that like for you? And two, what do we do to fix it? Like what kind of patient advocacy can we do to get the system to work better for us? Because right now it doesn’t work for us at all. It works for pharmaceutical companies, it works for the insurance business itself. But I know doctors are annoyed having to do prior authorizations on things that they have already done or defending, hey, I prescribed this.
Conclusion: A Call to Action
Anyway, that’s the episode. That’s it for today. So I pose those two questions for you. I would love to have a spirited and lively debate. Thank you for listening to this solo episode today. And I hope that you are able to deal with less stress around living with chronic illness. And you don’t have to do all of these things that just seemingly don’t make sense. I really appreciate you listening. I really appreciate you supporting the podcast.
Take Action: Join the Conversation
So that’s it for this episode. Take care of yourselves and I’ll talk to you in the next one. Bye. If you’d like the transcript for this episode and the video podcast, be sure to visit diabestipod.com. You’ll get all of those things. And the video podcast I think is engaging. It’s fun. It’s a lot like the audio podcast. I keep them short so that your attention spans can go elsewhere during the day, but visit diabestipod.com, you know, super helpful to the podcast, super helpful to me.
Wrapping Up
And it only takes a second and you get all the information that you need about every episode there. It’s like fantastic. But that’s it. Okay, I’m done. I’ll talk to you in the next one. Bye.
