The Corner Booth

These are strange, surreal times of the COVID-19 crisis. We're all in various forms of lockdown, everything we know is different and what once seemed "normal" is anything but these days. Yes, I have a Spotify playlist dubbed "In Quarantine Pandemic Playlist." And while I've been a remote worker with a home office for most of the past decade, everything in 2020 is now quite different -- except a high-level, the fact that I still have type 1 diabetes and need to maintain everything as far as D-management, public health emergency or not. Alcohol wipes and rarely-changed lancets have taken on new meanings these days, and the thought of having enough supplies and meds on hand while navigating my D-care via telehealth are certainly realities lately. We are without live real-time sports. The baseball season's postponed and dramatically different, there was no March Madness college basketball and the professional hockey season's on hold. Many have turn...

  Despite political claims to the contrary, insulin prices are not dropping as a result of President Donald Trump's actions leading up to the presidential election of 2020. Insulin certainly isn't "as cheap as water," as Trump claimed during the presidential debate in late September. His executive orders are controversial and symbolic at best. The underground exchange or "black market" continues to grow, accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis and patients who once relied on insulin from outside the United States. States continue to pass insulin co-pay cap legislation, and California became the first to allow for its own generic insulin development. Insulin prices continue to dominate the national discussion and remain a divisive topic in the midst of the political debate over drug pricing policy reform. The common understanding is that U.S. insulin prices have been jacked up to an unconscionable level and that needs to change, but t...