We came to the topic that you all want to hear: crazy drug pricing among diabetes patients. Today, we’ll have Scott Strumello to help us better understand why there is such an existing problem and what are the contributing factors as to why we can’t always get an affordable price for our meds.

Here’s some things about Scott:

Scott Strumello is a patient approaching his 50 year Joslin Medal for living with Type 1 diabetes. He has for years blogged at https://blog.sstrumello.com/ although he may be better known for his Twitter feed https://twitter.com/sstrumello which has occasionally been known to break news on diabetes before many rival sources. He believes that writing is becoming a lost art being abbreviated to fit into limited space. But, we can learn a lot from actually reading about things before drawing conclusions. A side-benefit of that "deep-dive" in researching topics is the discovery of some interesting work-arounds of the sort discussed in the podcast.

Stay tuned until the end of the episode, and join us on this journey to know more about the diabetes way!

[00:01 - 03:55] Opening Segment

• When Scott got diagnosed
• Prices were already high in 1976
• Pharmacy benefits did not exist

[03:56 - 11:13] All about Pricing and the Pharma 

• How the prices of the drugs come about
• The 4 factors and what each of these does
• pharma’s are now defined by their wrongdoings
• How the hell does the pharmaceutical managers get their name out there
• The entities people should know about
• The PBM’s

[11:14 - 19:05] Let’s discuss ‘caps’

• Drug rebates
• Not just for insulin
• Scott ranks the “villains”
• Copay caps and Price caps

[19:06 - 31:50] your insurance and pharmacy benefits

• Tracking trends with the prices
• Coupons is a holy grail
• Will we ever see transparency?

[31:51 - 34:28] Closing Segment

• Is insulin included in the discounts from the companies mentioned?
• Final Words 

Connect with Scott by shooting him an email sstrumello@gmail.com

Feel free to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Don’t forget to check our website! https://thediabetesway.com/

Want to connect with Dave and Amber? 

Get in touch with Dave and follow him on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can also email him at dkliff@diabeticinvestor.com. Be sure to visit his website https://diabeticinvestor.com

Get in touch with Amber on LinkedIn, and Twitter. Go and visit her website for more information https://www.diabetesdailygrind.com/

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!

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Tweetable quotes:

“When I was first diagnosed back in 1976, nobody I knew had pharmacy benefits as part of their insurance plan.” -  Scott Strumello

“The reality is: the way they market pharmaceuticals is they have to pay to get their drugs listed on a formulary for an insurance company.” -  Scott Strumello