Type II
diabetes is epidemic in the United States.
Treated effectively, a patient can live a long and productive life. Treated inadequately it can result in
shortened lifespan with sequelae that limit the quality of life markedly.
Controlling
weight gain by means of diet, exercise, and medication is a primary goal that
every doctor sets for diabetic patients.
This can be difficult to achieve as the genes that predispose to
diabetes also predispose to obesity.
Further, some anti-glycemic medications and even some anti-lipid
medications seem to make weight control difficult.
Gloria has
always followed such a strict diet that her Hgb A1C, marking the average level
of that particular Hgb for the previous 3 months, has always fallen into the
reference range for non-diabetics. Yet
her other medications have caused her to struggle to lose weight and to
maintain that loss.
Therefore,
her physician chose to put her on Victoza to see if that would help her lose
weight. Humana denied the drug, claiming
that weight loss was not an adequate reason to prescribe the drug.
This is the
same corporation that denies receiving any of the three appeals for coverage of
Victoza, which her physician’s office has submitted via fax.
Humana’s corporate
bureaucrats are directly interfering with decisions concerning treatment of
patients by physicians. This is being
done in order to maximize profits while denying patients access to the
medications their physicians prescribe.
Another
gleaming example of the lie that United States health care is among the best in
the world because it is market driven.
For bait and switch, see 26 March 2012
No comments:
Post a Comment