The first week in December I called Optum Pharmacy to renew my monthly supply of Imbruvica, a medicine that keeps my chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) from returning.
Beginning in October of 2019, I had undergone nine months of monthly chemotherapy treatments because my CLL had flared up after being in remission for 22 years. This past March, at the end of the chemo treatments (which worked, by the way), my oncologist prescribed Imbruvica.
When I first called to fill the Imbruvica prescription, I was asked a lot of questions and was told that a monthly dose (two pills every night) would cost $522.12. I was asked if I wanted to explore and apply for financial help. I checked online and discovered that Julia and my annual household income was too high to qualify me for financial assistance, so I OKed the payment and was sent the pills.
When the December supply of Imbruvica didn’t arrive on the Thursday it was supposed to, Julia called Optum. She discovered that they had sent it to the wrong address — to our Rhode Island address. Julia asked them to send me another supply, but Optum said they had to recover the missent shipment because each monthly supply of 60 pills was worth $15,000.
What? $15,000! That’s $180,000 a year!
When I heard this, my immediate reaction was guilt. Was it worth $180,000 a year to keep an 88-year old man alive in a pandemic that had struck down over 300,000 Americans, many who were as old and as physically compromised as I am?
It got me thinking. What does this situation say about America?
In a Trump-imagined, “me” America, where selfish individualism reigns, if his majesty needed medicine that cost $180,000 a year, he’d: (1) Buy stock in the company (Abbvie) that made and distributed it, (2) Tweet about the company, (3) hold a jam-packed White House party announcing he’d taken the medicine, (4) once he owned the stock, tell the company to raise the price after putting his name on the product (“ImTrumpica”) and (5) insist the company pay him an exorbitant licensing fee.
In socially-conscious-imagined, “we” America, where a sense of the dignity of all human life reigns, if anyone needed medicine that cost $180,000 a year, the government, under the auspices of Medicare, would pay for the drug and charge those who could afford it about 3 percent of the cost.
After getting over feeling guilty, I realized how fortunate I was to live in a country that respected the life of everyone. My life, considered in the context of single life by itself, might not be worth $180,000 a year, but considered in the context of an overall respect for all human life, my life, in fact any life, is priceless.
I’m so lucky to be able to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, 2020.
