Diabetes Blog – Happy-Medium.net

I’ve alluded to this a lot, but since I’m probably the King of Burying the Lead, blogging edition, let me just share that I have a lot of doctor appointments to make and keep this year. A lot, covering so many things.

That includes seeing an ophthalmologist for a comprehensive eye exam. My appointment was last week.

The news was all good, mostly… no glaucoma, no sign of retinopathy or macular degeneration. My prescription changed just a bit, but I needed new eyeglasses anyway, so I’m not complaining.

It sucks that I live in America, where I have to pay a fortune for health care, devices, and drugs. But it’s great that I’m one of the lucky ones in America with coverage good enough to allow me to get to the eye doctor every year.

That’s one of the things about medical insurance, and the fight to make health care less expensive here. If it’s less expensive, it’s naturally more affordable for more people, and that is way less expensive to the government and its citizens than just relying on emergency room care when things get really bad.

That’s true for eye care. It’s true for diabetes management. It’s true for someone with heart disease, and it’s true for those going through depression and a host of other psychological issues.

From a patient point of view, denying coverage, denying care, and denying affordable access to the drugs we need denies us our right to exist on the same plane as someone not living with a chronic condition. And when we do that, we’re not only acting in a shameful way toward our own fellow man, we’re collectively paying more for the privilege to do so.

I still have many more appointments left this year. They’re almost all like this one: designed to check out one part of my body or another so I can detect (hopefully) small problems before I might need to solve larger ones.

Don’t we all deserve the same opportunity?