Emma Kleck changes her Dexcom transmitter in a Vancouver park, the morning after traveling to Canada to purchase insulin. She hacks the device to save money, but this hack didn't work.
Monique Jaques, an alum of the NYU Tisch Department of Photography & Imaging, recently traveled alongside Emma Kleck, an American woman on a journey from her home in Santa Cruz, CA to Vanoucer, Canada to buy insulin. A single dose of the insulin Kleck takes daily is $300 a vial. In Canada, it is less than $50 per vial. She is part of an increasing number of people seeking relief from the prohibitively high cost of life-saving insulin by traveling north to stock up. From the article:
In the U.S., insulin costs have more than tripled in recent years... Those rising prices have had disastrous, and sometimes deadly, impacts for people with type 1 diabetes, 1 in 4 of whom have reported they’ve rationed insulin to save money. It’s particularly hard for young people like Kleck who aren’t making as much money or offered as robust an insurance plan as older Americans. Alec Smith, a 26-year-old restaurant manager from Minnesota, died from rationing insulin less than one month after aging off of his mother’s insurance.
The article was authored by Nicholas Florko and edited by fellow DPI alum Alissa Ambrose for STAT News.