← Diabetes Connections | Type 1 Diabetes
Diabetes Connections | Type 1 Diabetes
Inside Capitol Hill's Fight for Diabetes Care: What These Advocates Need You to Know
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody. I know it's such a busy time of year, but a quick reminder, registration is already open for three of our four 2026 Mom's Night out events. Join us in the D.C. suburbs in February. We'll be in Nashville in March, Detroit in September, and Seattle in October. Use the promo code podcast to save 15% off. And just between you and me, I'm going to keep that promo code going all year long just for you listeners. All of the Moms Night out Info is@diabetes-connections.com we are so excited to make these events better than ever. Come join us for the best combination of education, technology, community and cocktails in the T1D community.
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This week on Diabetes Connections, we're looking at some major policy issues happening in Washington and what you can really do to affect change. George Huntley is the CEO of dpac, the Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition. And we've got a lot to cover. Medicare changes, like competitive bidding, the changing landscape around GLP1 medications. Something like 1 in 8Americans now takes one of these medications and we talk about patient advocacy wins. Look, I know some of you are cynical. I get it. But if you've ever thought your voice doesn't matter, this conversation may change your mind. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your healthcare provider.
- [01:29]
Welcome to another week of Diabetes Connections. I'm your host, Stacey Sims. You know, we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. Just want to take a second and talk about the rest of this year. Right now I plan to have business as usual. We're going to have an episode every week. It looks like we're going to do one Christmas week as well because there's just a lot going on. But stay tuned on social and I'll let you know if there are any changes. I also wanna let you know about something I'm doing very differently. In 2026, we have done a weekly episode plus in the news episodes for a total of at least six episodes every month since June of 2015, we're scaling back just a little bit. We're gonna have episodes every week, but it's gonna alternate from the long format interview episodes to to the in the news episodes. So there will only be one episode each week. So on January 6th, we're gonna have a regular interview episode. January 13th will be in the news. January 20th will be an interview. The 27th will be the news, and so on from there. Will we have some bonus episodes? Of course, things are gonna happen. We're gonna wanna get the information out to you. I guarantee you I'm gonna tape too many episodes. Cause I'm in this rhythm already for all this time. But that's the plan right now. I love doing this show. I don't have any plans to stop, but we've added so many things. These in person events. I'm writing more, I'm traveling more, I'm speaking more. And I wanna make sure the quality doesn't suffer. I don't want this podcast to ever become a chore. And I want you to, you know, enjoy listening each and every week. I hope you're okay with it. As always, I love to hear what you think. I'm gonna be posting about this in the Facebook group as well. Okay, on to this week's interview. DPAC is something that many of you are familiar with and some of you are hearing about for the first time. Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition was co founded and run by people with diabetes who said the patient voice was missing from important policy conversations in Congress and in state legislative bodies. It's a lobbying group and it is registered that way. I am talking to Deepak CEO George Huntley. He has been living with Type 1 since 1983. George has been involved in diabetes advocacy for a very long time. A founding member of the Diabetes Leadership Council, American Diabetes association, children with diabetes. You name it, he's helped with it. As you've heard me say a million times, podcasting is tough for breaking news. I just talked to George last week. As you listen and even if things have changed in Washington and who knows, there's still so many ways for you to get involved. It is easy to do. We talk about it. Here's my conversation with Deepak's George Huntley. George Huntley, welcome to Diabetes Connections. Welcome back. It's great to talk to you again. How are you doing?
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B
I'm doing great, Stacey. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to the conversation.
- [04:17]
A
Yeah. Hey, would you mind setting the table for people who might not be that familiar with what it is that you do, what Deepak is all about. Cause like I said, it's been a while.
- [04:25]
B
Sure. I'm the CEO of the Diabetes Patient Advocacy Coalition. We are a patient focused advocacy for affordable, accessible, equitable access to care for anything a person with diabetes needs in order to manage and thrive in life and healthcare access. We've been around for over a decade and it is a busy time. This has been a particularly busy year in this. But I am a patient living with type one for 42, almost 43 years, myself and most of our team, many of our team are patients and advocates. And we're here to amplify the patient voice, which is what we do. We've got over 50,000 advocates across the country preserve really cool to say all 50 states. And we can help them engage in their local state work as well as federal and keep everybody apprised of what's going on.
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A
Before I move on to my questions, can people still jump in and become advocates for GPAC?
- [05:23]
B
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Go to diabetespac.org, diabetespac p a c.org and it's very easy. We don't spam you, we don't ask you for all of your life savings or anything like that. What we do do is keep you apprised of what's going on with things. And when there's legislative opportunities and opportunities to weigh in, we provide you with those. I will also say, please also, while you're at it, go to diabetes.org and sign up there. Go to Breakthrough T1D and sign up there. This is not a competition for advocacy. This is a community. And we will go after different things. This is just sign up for everybody. Definitely sign up for Deepak as we do some really exceptional work and we get involved in the economics of healthcare, which is, I think, what makes us unique. Because to me, it is all about the money that I'm a money guy, I'm a finance guy in my career. That's my background.
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A
Got it. Okay. So you said it was a busy year. I know as we are speaking this first week of December, it was a busy November. You all were on the Hill, right? What happened?
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B
We were on the Hill actually the very last week of October. We were right before the holiday. They were still shut down, which ironically didn't matter because you could get to the staffers were there so you could have the conversations in the hallways weren't as busy, so it worked out fine. But we're there working on pharmacy benefit manager reform, trying to pass through rebates to PAT and get just delinking their compensation and getting from the cost and the price of the drug and getting rid of the middleman in this process. We're making great strides. I'd love to talk about that. We're talking about competitive bidding on Medicare on insulin pumps and CGMs. And we should talk about that because we got some bad news recently on that. We're talking about access to obesity medications and beyond the medications, medical nutrition therapy and intensive behavioral therapy, which isn't well Covered today. If we can't do that, what are we doing? All right.
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A
Okay.
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B
Lots going on.
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A
So let's start with the bad news and we'll go from there.
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B
Sure.
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A
So this is about. Well, there's a lot of bad news, George.
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B
Yeah, really.
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A
But one of the things you wanted to talk about, I know, was Medicare, pumps, CGM coverage. So what's the problem?
- [07:36]
B
So cms, center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has decided to do competitive bidding on CGMs and pumps. And on the surface, I'm a finance guy. You're going to do competitive bidding. It's hard to say that that's a bad idea, but it turns into a very bad idea. They're not negotiating with the manufacturers. CMS doesn't buy from the manufacturers. They buy from distributors. They buy from suppliers. Think Edge park, thinks Liberty Medical. There's a number of them out there. I'm not here to say one's better than the other. I'm just saying that's who they're buying from. So those are the folks that are going to do the bids. They are asking for a combined CGM and insulin pump monthly bid. So two major things. One, they want to take the number of suppliers down from about 6,000 to nine or less, which is going to severely restrict senior citizen access.
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A
Wait, wait, 6,000 to 9? Correct. N I, N, E. That is correct.
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B
Okay, that is correct. And we said the German version in nine when that came out. And like nine. Uh, this is a terrible idea. And just to digress, they did this same thing with blood glucose monitors about 15 years ago. In fact, it was, it was one of the issues that DPAC was founded on when they did competitive bidding on these, these. The finger prick machines. And the result of that was senior citizens lost access to blood glucose monitors because seniors are not. And I'm. I don't dye this gray anymore. So I'm getting close to that age. We're not very good at change. We don't like it when you rearrange the grocery aisle. So if you make us change all of our providers, you're going to have people fall off. And it's going to not just be a few people, it's going to be tens of thousands of people. That's what happened last time. And you had tens of thousands of senior citizens who. There was no CGM at the time. They're on insulin, and they no longer have access to blood glucose monitors. And the increased mortality rates as a result of that program alone were so incredibly disturbing that DPAC and The National Minority Quality Foundation, Gary Pukrin's group, which is. He's awesome. They led the statistic fight on this and we actually won and got it reversed, but it was too late. You painted the barn after the horse was out. They're doing it again. So this is. We've seen the movie before. They're going to take this down from 9,000 to, excuse me, 6,000 to nine. That's step one. Step two, as if this could not get worse, they're changing the economic model to a rental versus an own. And what that's going to do, there's going to do a few things. It makes the supplier, again, that distributor, responsible for the support of the technology. They don't do that today. They just grab it from the supply, from Insulate, Tandem, whomever that is might be, and insulets. Actually, since they make patch pumps, they're not included in this. But Medtronic, Tandem, they buy it from them and then they resell it. They don't service the pump.
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A
Right. If you have a problem with your Tandem or your Medtronic, you're not calling Edge park or Liberty.
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B
Correct.
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A
That's what you're saying.
- [10:56]
B
Okay, that's what this, that's. This changes that in its current form. And they released this the Friday after Thanksgiving. So it's relatively. From our conversation, it's recent. So now you've got supplier that has no, no real way of doing that. But the notion of it being a rental means that Edge Park, Liberty, that supplier, they own it. You don't. The patient does not. So if I want another one in that lease model, think your car, you have to turn in your, your, your leased vehicle in order to get another one. And so I'm going to have to turn in my pumpkin, wait for the paperwork and all of that before they send me another pump, which means I'm off pump therapy for one, two, three weeks, depending. I mean, the disruption in care for seniors is about to get off the chart if we don't get this fixed.
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A
Just devil's advocate, or to ask the good side of this, is it a significant cost savings for the patient to rent?
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B
No, it's not going to save the patient a dollar, in my opinion. I really don't see that happening at all. What's even more trag, it's not going to save the government any money because if you think about the process, you've just put a massive amount of cost on a player that is the supplier, distributor that doesn't have that cost today. So they're going to increase their pricing. In addition, when I have to turn my pump in, I can't go a week without insulin. I haven't grown a pancreas in the meantime. In fact, they make you go through a C peptide test to prove I don't have one. So I have to, so I have to now go on multiple daily injections, which means they've got to buy me pens. I've got to go talk to my physician about how do I use a pen. I've been on pump since 1994. I haven't been on MDI in decades and I know many people who are, but it's just not me. So I'm going to that diabetes education. All the extra costs that Medicare is going to incur by this disruption process. So we've got two years before it becomes effective. It's 2028. Was the defect the effective date? We have two more rule cycles to continue our lobbying efforts. To say guys, let's get this right, let's fix this because this is what you've put forth is a mess. And they received 900,000 comments that's, I'm not exaggerating now. What that rule had more than just diabetes equipment in it. So it wasn't all diabetes. But let's, you know, we're vocal. They heard a lot and they basically ignored most of it. The one thing they did include in the final rule that they published was that because we were concerned that ultimately this is going to drive economically that supplier to only have the cheapest thing on the shelf because they're going to do a single bid. And why would I have anything that's. This costs more than this. I'm going to push you to the one that's cheaper. That's exactly what happened with the, with the blood glucose monitors and it basically shut all of the US manufacturers out of the business and you wound up with a, an Asian knockoff that had real big quality issues. Now we don't have those CGMs, if you will, on the market today. There aren't low quality ones on the market today. But that's, it's going to drive people there. We got a lot of concerns.
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A
Is this something. And I don't know if we need to get too much into process, but I think people are more familiar with executive orders and that kind of thing than they ever have been. Is this something that is in front of Congress? Is this something that's an executive order? I mean, how simple is something like this to change or to get through in the first place.
- [14:31]
B
Well, it's an excellent question. And the thing. An executive order. This is not an executive order, but it's the same. It's a rule that CMS is coming out with. So they don't. It does not require an act of Congress. Congress can pass a law and dictate that CMS do a certain thing. And so that will be one of our advocacy tactics. CMS loves it when Congress tells them what to do.
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A
But I'm sure. I know.
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B
But sometimes you got to do what you got to do.
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A
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:59]
B
But the rulemaking process, I mean, we've been. The C peptide test. So you have to pass a C peptide test in order to qualify for insulin pump. I asked CMS how many people with type 1 diabetes suddenly get cured on their 65th birthday. I can't wait to be the one. I've got two more years to go and I'm excited by to be the guy that gets cured. Now, the reason they do this is they screen out type 2s, which is also foolish because we now know type 2s do much. If they want to have a pump, you give it to them, they are cheaper, they stay out of the er, they stay out of the hospital. This is a pennywise pound foolish. But it really is threatening the type 1 population, by the way it's set up and it's just not good for patients. So we had members of Congress send letters into CMS. As a result, as part of this advocacy effort, the two chairs, the Diabetes Caucus, wrote a beautiful letter that explained everything we wanted to do. They ignored it. We sent thousands of pages and thousands of patient letters in. So we will continue that advocacy and hope to get through to get some of this tweaked. This administration doesn't like to be told no. I know that's shocking to the listeners, but they don't. But can we. Let's tweak this so you don't kill some people.
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A
Well, plainly said. Listen, we going to spend a lot of time talking about Medicare because this is what's in front of us at the moment, but also because thankfully the type 1 diabetes population is aging in a way that it was not in previous generations. So we've got to figure these things out because this is a population that 50 years ago wasn't making it to 65, and thank God you all are. So we need to talk about it and get it settled in a way that I think many people in the general population may not realize what's coming. So I just want to put that out there. George?
- [16:43]
B
Well, and you're right. And when I was diagnosed almost 43 years ago, they told me the life expectancy of a type 1 is 35 years. Why they chose to share that information with me I cannot speak to because it's, you know, obviously it left an indelible mark. But the other thing I will say from a the younger folk listening to this, commercial insurance very frequently follows Medicare. So if this model moves forward, I could easily see it landing in commercial insurance. And we cannot be in a scenario where I got to turn in my pump before I get the next one. We've got to get some of these things fixed and patient choice needs to remain in this game because the technology that's best for you may not be the one best for me. They don't all work with each other and it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to disrupt a patient's career.
- [17:36]
A
Yeah, well said. All right, let's talk about another big issue that many people probably have heard more about and that is coverage for GLP1 medications. And talk me through it because Trump made a deal with Novo and Lilly and everybody's taking this stuff. There's bipartisan support to pay for it. So from your perspective, what's going on?
- [17:55]
B
Well, from my perspective, progress is being made in this thing. So this is a class of drugs that will reshape this country and this world, honestly, in a way that we, you really couldn't barely imagine. Statins really helped heart disease and things and cholesterol and things like that and that reshaped that arena. The long term health benefits of these GLP1s we are barely scratching the surface on. And you know, I just read something today that it dropped cancer rates almost 39%. I mean, when you start factoring that into the ROI of paying for these drugs, it's going to become a no brainer. So one of the issues, and I'm going to bounce around a little bit on this, but one of the issues that you have from a commercial insurance perspective on do I cover this? Is. Well, it's a long term thing. If I pay this amount right now to cover these obesity meds, this person's only going to be with me on my health plan for three, four or five years. And the benefit of that's going to be maybe in the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th year, but it's not going to be as much in the first five. I think we're going to see more and more that say, hey, you will get an ROI in the first five. And that's coming and again, the more they continue to study this, you're going to see more and more. And I, in my day job for most of my career, I was the chief financial officer of a professional services firm and manufacturing company for almost 40 years. But 25 plus years I was the plan administrator of our health plan. So I know how the health plan administrators think. And we actually do educational programs through our Diabetes Leadership Council organization to educate self insured employers on their plan design. And I'm presenting on this topic to them. Milliman just came out with a study. I read this within the last 24 hours, people with obesity, the retention rate on a health plan is substantially higher and retention rate as an employee is substantially higher than someone without obesity. Which is an interesting piece of news. It makes sense when, when you consider, unfortunately, the stigma that goes with obesity. Someone with obesity is going to be more likely afraid to change jobs if they have a steady employment, they're not going to rock the boat as much. And we do know that as an employer, if you provide access to the GLP1s, they are much more likely to stay with you, but they're going to stay with you regardless. So that piece of data is going to wake some employers up that there's probably some news here and some rationale for making that investment. But now what you see with the, with the changes, with the negotiations between the Trump administration and Lillian Novo, you're seeing the price of the drug drop precipitously. So it starts out What, a year, two years ago at 1200, $1300 a month. Right. And we all looked at that going oh my God. And granted you. Thank you. Here's a cure for the rich. And right.
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A
The people on the Upper east side of Manhattan, I think were the biggest population taking it at that time.
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B
And there was no.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And eventually there was shortage for diabetes. But the reality is there's a lot of rich people like apparently the 1% are bigger than you think. But what you've seen is the list price of these medications plummet. And I challenge anybody to look at any other drug class in the last 20 years where you've seen the list price of the drug get cut by a third, get cut to a third, get two thirds of it gone. So you're looking at, you can get it direct right now and think it's now dropping to 450 on some of them. And I think maybe and you can get the initial dose at you know, in like that 250 range and maybe, I mean the starter path. But you're not going to be on that very long. And anybody looks at that and says, oh, I can afford that, but I can't afford the other. What do you do that? That's false economics. But you still are looking at a substantially lower cost. When I talk to employers, even if you looked at the thousand dollar list price, there's a rebate on these drugs through the health systems. Okay, so they weren't $1,000 to a health plan before it was close to what you can get from Lilly Direct or novo direct. It's 404,50amonth. If you are an employer and you have thousands of employees and you have negotiated with these drug companies to pay more than that than they could go direct, you probably have a really bad pbm. I mean, you look at the economics of it and I talk to employers about this and I'm just this sarcastic because you have to be, but you're like, guys, it's not 12 grand a year. It's less than half that from a therapy and treatment perspective. And it's continuing to drop and it will. You've got oral meds coming out, you've got more things coming out in this class. It is an area of hope for the health of the world, not just a country, et cetera. And it's the first thing. I mean, I've been in the diabetes advocacy game for decades. It's the first time you've seen anything that can not only stop that type 2 curve, but darn near eliminate it. I mean, how exciting is that? I mean, we all want, we all say in these org we want to just get out of business because there's no more diabetes. I actually mean that. I'd love that to happen. So we've got a shot at making some of that happen. And you're seeing the market shift precipitously. We're going to have to watch this. The next year or two is going to be even more exciting.
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A
Well, and you are DPAC and you are not type 1 PAC.
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B
Correct.
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A
So, you know, this is really important for people with type 2, but I believe, you know, not alone. All indications are it'll be approved for type one in the near future. Do you anticipate kind of the same trajectory in terms of the cost coming down and more people covering it for people with type 1, or are we going to have to fight a different fight?
- [23:38]
B
It's an excellent question. And the short answer is no one can tell you. Yes, but I can tell you my guess. Okay. The diabetes population that drives cost is type 2 okay. Other than the technology. Okay. So if they're covering it for type two, they will likely cover it for type one. Yeah. They may prior off it. It may take a year or two to break through, but they will eventually cover it for type one. And as the pricing goes down and as the marketplace and the supply, which seems to have solved itself, which let's hope that stays, as the price gets lower, supply, demand, the demand's going to get bigger. Hopefully all of that stays in sync. But I do believe the Type 1s will eventually get it, whether it is day one, after the FDA approves it, or whether it takes a cycle or two. It's an eventuality. And obviously the patient advocacy organizations were going to be out front leading the charge of you need to do this.
- [24:32]
A
Yeah. I mean, I would also say just a little bit other additional devil's advocate. You know, there are a lot of people who look at Medicare and say, this has all got to go. Like, this is so expensive. It's such a drain on the country. There is a legitimate political thought of, we have to find ways to cut this. And, you know, here you and I are, and I make no bones about it, advocating like, no, no, we need more of it. But the GLP1s are a really interesting case because people are taking them in such huge numbers. I think I've written like one in eight Americans are now taking these drugs. They are less expensive than they were, but they still are pretty pricey. You know, what do you say to someone who says to you, like, that's too much, George, back off.
- [25:10]
B
You have to look at where Medicare is spending its money and any other health plan, okay? Drugs are the tail that wags the dog. The big cost of a health plan is major medical. It's hospitalizations, it's surgeries, it's all of the things, okay, the drugs will make the headlines, but it's not what's driving the cost of a health plan other than in Medicare. When I talk to employers, and as an employer, nobody buys drug insurance, they buy health insurance, okay? And so I'm looking at the holistic plan of my company and the hundreds of employees and who's got what and how much we can afford. Medicare is the same thing thing, except that you do buy part D versus part B. So you are buying drug insurance, which is ironic when I say that, but you have to buy it. They force you to. So you're effectively buying health insurance. Now, my conversation with members of Congress, CMS. There are 38 million Americans with diabetes that cohort of people go to the ER 19 million times a year. That's absurd. 19 million. It's half. And who are those people? Medicare and Medicaid. It's not the employer commercial insurance people, it's the Medicare and Medicaid. Sure, some employer commercial people, but that's not what's driving it. So where's Medicare spending its money? It's in the hospitalizations, all the things that these GLP1s are going to prevent, delay and prevent and eliminate. So we know you give the patient access to automated insulin delivery systems, CGMs, what gets measured, gets managed. And education, if you educate them on how to live. And I think Elliot Joslin, Jeff Hitchcock at CWD Children with Diabetes credit for this slide because he shows it all the time. Elliot Joslin, who said the person with diabetes who knows the most lives the longest. And he's right. And that is the absolute reason to invest in education because they're, they live a healthier, longer life and they're not draining the Medicare system. So that's really where these are. This is about math and we've got to have that ROI conversation. We all know how the movie ends for each of us. It's just you really don't know how it's going to be for you or me. But you really want. The chronic conditions will drain it. Just let's manage them.
- [27:28]
A
I love it. That's a great answer, I appreciate that. But I didn't want to stop without asking you about the Obamacare, the extensions. I mean, we don't know what's going to happen. I do know I buy my healthcare in the marketplace and even without the subsidies, my costs are going up astronomically, which I kind of think, I don't know, editorial statement here. They're kind of sneaking it in thinking people will think it's the, you know. Yeah, the supplements not coming through. But is there anything we can do? Is there anything that you're talking to folks in Washington about?
- [27:58]
B
Well, yes. So you put the heat on your members of Congress to at least extend these, these subsidies. I don't think you're going to get a permanent extension, but let's get 26 covered and then let's figure out what a long term solution looks like. You've got two issues with healthcare. You've got the cost of the insurance and the cost of the care itself. The cost of the insurance is going through the roof. You are quite correct. And the increases that hit the exchanges this year, I agree with you that there's likely some substantial profiteering going on in there.
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A
Yeah, shenanigans.
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B
There's there. And somebody needs to look at that. I'm not. We don't have the, the lens to say who did this versus that. But the, the numbers are just astronomical and they're blaming the GLP1s and the other things. There's more to it than just that. So one, let's get these subsidies extended so that you don't harm the most vulnerable Americans. It's maddening. And we're, we're very afraid of the Medicaid cuts that are coming in a year and that's going to be devastating to the country. Excuse me. And the health care system because you have taken a lot of people through the exchanges, not being the subsidies and now the Medicaid cuts that are going to throw people out. You're going to have almost a 57% increase in the uninsured population of this country. That's a massive number. Now they're going to be at the ERs. Back to the. Who goes to the ER, the person to them insurance. And they wait till I'm. I got to go to the er. Now those hospitals have to eat that cost. They can't. They're already. Especially the rural runs, some of the, you know, the smaller nonprofits. You're going to see more and more closures, and we've seen enough of those. There's a wave of access to care, and it's going to be. It's going to start in the rural communities, but it's going to hit even some urban area sites as well. And you're going to see pullbacks and people who have insurance won't have access to care because the hospital closed. It didn't just close for those that couldn't afford it. It just closed. And we're going to have a lot to work with. So we've got more to talk about, Stacy, and this is not a time to stay quiet on your couch.
- [30:18]
A
All right, so we started this off by talking about DPAC forming about a decade ago. What do you think? I mean, I know change doesn't come quickly and I know that working with legislators can be diffic. Are you proud of the work that you've done? What do you want people to know?
- [30:33]
B
Oh, I'm very proud, very proud of this team and all of the advocates that we've got in the champions, et cetera. I mean, they make it all happen. We have over the years. I mean, shoot, we've passed so many laws in state level that it's exciting. We rebate passed through in five states where the PBM reform is probably the number one thing that we've been focusing on for the X number of years. And it's about to happen these next couple of years. You're going to see it almost was in a congressional and the Congress at the end of the last year and it was killed by a tweet. There is bipartisan support to really pull back this middleman and restrain it. Delink his compensation from the cost of the drugs. Again, it's. The Average cost is 50%. The average rebate is 50%. And this isn't just diabetes. This is every branded drug in America. So DPAC leads the Patient Pocket Protector Coalition, which has dozens of nonprofits and again, not just diabetes to go out to say Congress. This is not just a diabetes issue. And we're all in this together. And we do the same at state houses. There were 1200 PBM related bills at the state level in 2025. That's insane. We've never seen anything like that. It's so many. You can't possibly keep up with them. We're. We're good. We're not that good. That's what's going on. That's the area where I would say to change the health system, that's a major one. To get rid of the conflict of interest in the middle of it. But everywhere you turn, there's another opportunity. So we're just getting started and we're making good progress.
- [32:09]
A
All right. And then you said, get off your couch and help out again. Besides going to the website, what should people do? Are they. Should they be prepared? I always tell people. Tell your story, right? Have a story to tell, even if you don't think it's a tale of woe, like have a story ready.
- [32:24]
B
Well, these things impact you. If these are patients listening to us, right? Tell your patient story. It takes four people to get a law changed. All right? You need a champion in the legislature, so that's an important person. You need the scientific evidence to say this makes sense. This is good medical science. You need the economic evidence and you need the patient voice. And if you don't have all four of those things, the bill dies most of the time. You've got to have the patient don't. You don't need to bring everything. You don't need to be an expert in medicine. But you do need to say to your. And that by the way, your legislator works for you. You need to say to them, this is why it's important to Me. And it doesn't. This diabetes, as we all know, is bipartisan. You know, so this is not a blue or a red issue. This is how do we get America healthy. But yes, they need to hear from their constituents. So call your local offices. Every member of Congress has a local office in your home state. Feel free to call in again, as I mentioned earlier, sign up to diabetespact.org, diabetes.org, breakthrought1d.org and be an advocate, because they will send you what's going on of interest. Breakthrough will talk to you about research programs, et cetera, and we sign on to them. But I'm not going to send you that. I'm going to send you PBM bills and I'm going to send you state work. Breakthrough doesn't do state work. Love them to death. They're great, but they don't do state work.
- [33:53]
A
Yeah, everybody's got their thing.
- [33:54]
B
Yeah. So that's where, you know, get involved in all of it. And then there may be something in your. There were 1200 PBM bills. Every state in the union had one. But that normally, normally there's not something going on in all 50 states. You may be sitting down quietly waiting for something to happen, and it doesn't. But I tell you, it's a hot time.
- [34:15]
A
Well, George, thank you so much for joining me for covering the gamut. I'd love to talk to you again in a couple of months, get an update on what's going on and hopefully, as you listen, find out how you can help get involved and keep me posted on what you're doing. George, thanks for being here.
- [34:28]
B
Appreciate it. Thank you, Stacey. Have a great day.
- [34:35]
A
More information about everything we talked about over at diabetes-connections.com, of course. I know it's a crazy time of year, but bookmark this, put this on your to do list. Maybe this is a New Year's resolution to get involved, to call your people in Congress to join DPAC or whatever organization. As George said, whatever speaks to you and however you want to get involved and become a patient voice. If you're a healthcare provider, your voice is incredibly valuable as well. Just speak up, right, and tell your voice story. Thanks as always to my editor, John Buchenis from Audio Editing Solutions. Thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Sims. I'll see you back here soon. Until then, be kind to yourself.
- [35:17]
Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacy Sims Media. All rights reserved.
- [35:21]
B
All wrongs avenged.