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Amy Lynn Smith: Life With Diabetes Is Sweeter Thanks To Obamacare
When Alexander Star was 15 years old, he thought he was the picture of health, especially after he made the varsity basketball team. But when he told one of his teachers he needed to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes, she rightly told him he should be checked for diabetes. Frequent urination is a classic warning sign. When the doctors tested Star’s blood glucose level, it was 1,300 mg/dL – dangerously high considering that even in people with diabetes the goal is to keep blood glucose levels between about 100 and 150 mg/dL. “The doctors wondered why I wasn’t in a coma,” says Star, who is now a 29-year-old recording artist/songwriter living in Florida. “That was the beginning of my journey as a type 1 diabetic.”
He was covered under his father’s insurance plan until he turned 26 – when he suddenly found himself without health insurance he could afford. “The COBRA plan I was on shot up from $120 a month to $512 a month for the exact same plan, a cost that was not do-able for me,” Star says. Fortunately, the Obamacare marketplace opened up soon after and he enrolled in a new plan. “If it wasn’t for Obamacare, I don’t know how I’d be capable of taking care of myself,” Star says. “Even if I had a lot of money, before Obamacare they could still decline me because I have a pre-existing condition.” Star signed up for a plan with better coverage and more personal attention than he received from his previous plan. His premiums are around $150 a month and he doesn’t pay anything extra for his insulin pump or continuous blood glucose monitor – diabetes management options his previous provider never even told him about.
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The Obama Diary 
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