It's Called "Population Control," People

People with serious diseases are finding themselves getting handed the shitty end of the stick when it comes to insurance copays on their medications. The medication costs can be enormous, and the insurer wants the insured to foot a bigger portion of the bill than their previous traditional copays of $10, $20, whatever, to 20% to 33%. The list of diseases in this article just happens to include multiple sclerosis, which you all know is my newfound "friend." These people with severe and chronic illnesses are the ones least likely to be working and earning an income in the first place, so let's sockittoem.

In terms of cold hard cash: The Copaxone injections I use for my MS cost $1740.13 for a 30-day supply, of which I pay a $40 copay. Under this "tiered" system, I would pay anywhere between $348.03 and $574.24 a month for my medication. This is an 870% to 1435% increase in my out-of-pocket cost just for the medication. This does not include the cost my employer and I fork over to the insurer in the first place just to have coverage, said cost having increased many-fold since I started working at the company a mere 7 years ago. Also keep in mind: This is not a medication to CURE my disease, merely to "try" to prevent acute exacerbations. This makes just so much sense, really. They'll NOT pay for medication to try to PREVENT an exacerbation, but they'll cover the much larger bills associated with hospitalization and testing and inpatient medications administered, etc., for an acute exacerbation. Yeah. Kind of like not paying for birth control or abortion but paying for prenatal care, labor and delivery, and then yet another child that will be covered on the policy.

So my choices are:
1. Fork over the cash (which is almost a whole week's pay) to get the medication to try to keep from getting worse and ending up on permanent disability, foregoing those pesky incidental expenses like rent, groceries, and electricity. I'll be living in a box on the street, but at least I'll have my medication!
2. Use my cash to pay for those pesky incidental expenses (above) and stop taking the medication, progressing in my disease process until I "expire." (That means "DIE" for those of you who don't know that medical term that bothers me for some reason, like we have a fucking date stamped on our butt cheek like a gallon of milk.)

I'm not wealthy. I can't afford to buy these medications. So I will just have to suck it up, accept the fact that I am poor and destined to die quicker than a wealthy individual who has the money to buy them to prolong not just their life, but their QUALITY of life.

That's why it's called population control. I've seen it for years, known it was happening and tried spreading the word but just being called a fruitcake or conspiracy theorist for my efforts. I've seen a young woman die of a completely treatable cancer just because of her insurance carrier's "policies." I've seen another woman beg and plead for money to abort a deformed fetus that would not survive delivery and likely would have killed the mother during said delivery, because Medicaid, her only healthcare coverage, would not pay for it: Two birds with one stone?