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Millions of Americans each year are diagnosed with Diabetes, and almost everyone knows someone who is suffering from the life altering disease. More than 20 million Americans are living with Diabetes today. Diabetes is a metabolism disorder, and for people who have Diabetes the body has a problem breaking down and digesting food. This is because food that we eat is broken down into a sugar called Glucose, which is the main way a body fuels itself. The way that Glucose works is that it goes into the bloodstream through Insulin, which is a hormone that comes from the Pancreas. The Pancreas matches up the appropriate amount of Glucose to move the mood into our blood stream, but for people with Diabetes the Pancreas does not produce Insulin at all or produces very little. This causes the body to lose its main way of getting energy and fuel which is called Diabetes.
For the millions of people who are suffering from this Disease the costs can become very expensive for the monthly purchases of Insulin and other drugs needed to keep Diabetes under control, and for many people these costs are unaffordable. Diabetes is most common in adults over the age of 60, this is when most people are starting to retire. This is a problem because for people who are nearing retirement it may be very hard to find affordable health insurance. Affordable health insurance is so difficult to find for people who are around this age because many elderly people plan to wait until age 64 to be covered by Medicare. The problem with that is illnesses don’t wait for people to turn 64 to set in, for many people Diabetes can start much earlier and can cause huge financial problems if you do not have affordable health insurance.
Although Diabetes can be effectively managed medical supplies are necessary to follow and check glucose levels. The only problem with this is that it may cost hundreds of dollars in just a single month to check Glucose levels for one person. In recent studies it was found that people without affordable health insurance were more likely to mismanage their diabetes, which had debilitating consequences on thousands of lives. It was also found that adults without affordable health insurance were considered high-risk for developing complications due to the lack of treatment of diabetes. This is very dangerous seeing that the side effects and complications of Diabetes can be very severe and sometimes life threatening. With all these problems with health insurance in the United States it is really necessary to take a hard look at our health care system, and realize that in many areas the health care coverage system isn’t adequately covering Diabetes patients.
