Re: INGAP bounced from failure to failure for 27 years
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Posted by Jay on 10:01:08 2010/01/22
In Reply to:
Re: INGAP bounced from failure to failure for 27 years posted by elliott
I'll just address the concept of a complete vs. partial cure first. I would consider any treatment that (1) normalized my blood sugars and (2) eliminated multiple daily insulin injections a cure, even if I had to take it every day. I don't think that there's any point to the semantic argument we seem to get into sometimes. Call it whatever you want (cure, treatment, etc), but anything that would accomplish those two things would be valuable.
As to how much is that worth to me? Well that depends. First of all, my diabetes is quite well controlled, but nobody's perfect. So the question is, how much benefit will I derive from a treatment that would accomplish the above? The benefits are obvious. No highs. No lows. Less frequent or no injections. The secondary benefits are likely to be a marginally increased lifespan, reduced chance of kidney failure and heart attack, and arrest or possible reversal of neuropathy and retinal disease.
If your treatment truly delivered euglycemia and one injection every six months or something, then I would be willing to part with most of my disposable income, but that's hardly feasible in the long run. More likely I would do one of three things:
1) wait until the treatment is covered by my provincial health plan/work plan.
2) Wait for the early adopters to bring the price down over time and then jump in.
3) Use the treatment, but sporadically, in order to gain windows of benefit but not continuous euglycemia...i.e. go on the treatment for a year, off for a year.
Now to your question...what if the treatment didn't deliver one or both of the criteria above? If the treatment didn't deliver euglycemia I wouldn't bother with it. I already manage to keep my blood sugar in a normal range most of the time, so that's the primary consideration for me. Near perfect euglycemia is a must for any treatment.
As I've said above, even if the treatment was as frequent as my daily injections I would still go for it, since euglycemia is the real goal, not elimination of injections.
As for what expense is warranted? I don't know. We don't pay for most medical treatments directly here in Canada, so I have very little experience with pricing them.
It must be very difficult to price such an ethically charged product. I hope you strike a fair balance.
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