Mother Jones – Since May 2021, Rebecca Dotson has navigated type II diabetes with the help of mutual aid.
Without the right resources—monitoring devices, insulin, and other medications—unmanaged diabetes can, at worst, kill people; it can also lead to expensive hospital stays and complications including amputations.
Insulin is seven to 10 times more expensive in the United States than abroad, on average, which can be disastrous for uninsured and underinsured people.
A few months after she was first diagnosed, Dotson, a former registered nurse, reached out to a group called Mutual Aid Diabetes, which distributes funds and supplies like insulin pens around the US to those who need them—like Dotson, who now receives insulin and funds to help with insurance co-pays from the group as often as twice a month.
Dotson, who lives in Pennsylvania, has also been battling advanced bone cancer, which leaves her in a lot of pain. Knowing that she has a place to turn for help managing her diabetes takes some weight off her back, though not all.
“My diabetic medications are some of the most expensive and hard to get sometimes,” Dotson said.
An estimated one in six Americans on insulin have rationed it due to cost, which can lead to death.
Mutual Aid Diabetes, or MAD, is entirely volunteer-run. It came to fruition earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic through diabetics who wanted to help others in their communities—nearly 40 million Americans have a form of diabetes—survive to the next day when they couldn’t access insulin, or other diabetes medications and supplies.
Unlike many patient-focused groups, they do not accept money from pharmaceutical companies.
An estimated one in six Americans on insulin have rationed it due to cost, which can lead to death. Rationing insulin, research shows, is more common among Black, middle-income, underinsured and uninsured people.
Allie Marotta, one of MAD’s co-founders, knows what that’s like …
