re: #219 Fat Bastard Vegetarian

My wife is a diabetic. With insurance our monthly cost is 100.00, because you need 5 different maintenance scripts for it.

Insulin regular CHING!
Insulin NPH, CHING
Syringes, CHING!
Lancets, CHING
Test Strips, CHING!

I can’t imagine what the poor folks do, but Insulin is still a Lily product and no generic is available.

Go figure.

Cripes. In New Zealand, your wife would pay $3 for a *three month* supply of each of those things. Once you reached 20 prescription items in an year per family (so four months assuming no-one else needed prescription items) you would get them free. In the UK, a diabetic would get all their prescriptions (not just those related to diabetes) free, unless somethings changed since I worked there a couple of years ago

PS: I don’t mean to come across a a zealot for government funded systems. I know we have our problems, including access to newer drugs and waiting lists for surgery. My career after graduation will (hopefully) be based on solving those problems. :) In a lot of ways, though, I do believe goverment funded systems can do things better.