Today in the Senate Health and Long Term Care Committee, Rep. Jacquelin Maycumber testified on behalf of her bill to reduce the cost of insulin.
HB 2662 requires health plans to cap the out-of pocket cost of insulin for patients at $100 for a 30-day supply.
Describing the impetus driving the bill, Maycumber shared her experience discovering the exorbitant cost of insulin after her son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes last year.
In addition to today’s testimony, Maycumber candidly discussed her experience in a recent story reported by the Inlander’s Daniel Walters.
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The bill is scheduled for executive session in the Senate Health & Long Term Care Committee at 8:00 AM on Friday.
In March of last year we learned our son has Type 1 Diabetes. When they stabilized him, and we learned everything we could those first few days, just to take him home was more scary than having a newborn baby in the car. I went down to the pharmacy to discharge him and my out-of-pocket expense with two insurance companies was $1000. That includes insulin and supplies. I am blessed, blessed to be able to pay for that, but I thought about all the mothers and fathers who couldn’t.
Those first few weeks, you grieve the life you thought your child was going to have, and the life that now is before them. Every minute, they have to have this drug to survive. I am a part of a group of parents with chronically ill children. We have 2 AM wakeup calls to make sure they haven’t gone through a coma in the middle of the night. We are a part of a family that, when we wait for preauthorization on a three day weekend, you don’t know if you’ll get the insulin until the next Tuesday.
Madame Chair, I don’t write a lot of policies. I believe my position is to help others pass policy. But this not a Republican or a Democrat bill, and you can see that by the cosponsors. This is a mother’s bill. This bill for all the mothers, and the parents; the late nights, all the tears that we shed in secret, the fears that we have just to let our child do little things, including go to school. The three day weekends when we may not have enough insulin and the pharmacies won’t be open and we won’t get the prescriptions in time. It’s for all those children that are about to have a future, that will be adults before you, and all their dreams that they have futures.
Madame Chair and distinguished members of this committee, I have devoted my education and future to biochemistry and research. As a Legislature, we have failed in this area. The price of the drug has increased 500 percent in the last decade. I bring this bill before you with the future of those children in mind and what their lives look like.”
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