{"id":15922,"date":"2024-11-04T15:00:12","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=15922"},"modified":"2024-11-04T16:24:19","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T16:24:19","slug":"chronic-diseases-can-come-with-chronic-financial-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=15922","title":{"rendered":"Chronic Diseases Can Come With Chronic Financial Pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For millions of Americans, paying for the treatment needed to manage their diseases can become its own lifelong problem.<\/p>\n

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Karen Mancera ended the phone call in a panic. In July, she was informed that she was being dropped from a program that allowed her to get free infusions of a medication she needed to keep her chronic inflammatory bowel disease at bay.<\/p>\n

Without the medication, the symptoms of her disease, called ulcerative colitis, could be debilitating \u2014 persistent diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain and blood loss so severe she had once been hospitalized. But Johnson & Johnson, which manufactures the medication, Remicade, and runs the program that helped cover the cost of the drug, said she hadn\u2019t submitted the necessary paperwork.<\/p>\n

Ms. Mancera, 26, said she\u2019d never received it. (Johnson & Johnson said it could not discuss an individual patient\u2019s case, but it would be willing to discuss Ms. Mancera\u2019s eligibility with her.)<\/p>\n

Because Ms. Mancera\u2019s insurance didn\u2019t cover Remicade, she would be left to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket. As a doctoral student, that wasn\u2019t feasible. Her annual income was under $50,000. So she turned to steroids, a much less effective alternative, she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI feel very powerless,\u201d Ms. Mancera said.<\/p>\n

Ms. Mancera is among the estimated 129 million Americans<\/a> who deal with a major chronic disease, like a heart condition or an autoimmune disease. Women are even more likely<\/a> than men to have such conditions. For many, the cost of treating those diseases month after month, year after year, can prove to be its own chronic problem \u2014 one that can fill people with fear and lead to drastic measures and risky trade-offs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will get through whatever this body does or takes me through,\u201d said Shannon Hart, 59, who has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was a child. \u201cBut it\u2019s the financial part of it that scares me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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For millions of Americans, paying for the treatment needed to manage their diseases can become its own lifelong problem.Karen Mancera ended the phone call in a panic. In July, she was informed that she was being dropped from a program that allowed her to get free infusions of a medication she needed to keep her chronic inflammatory bowel disease at bay.Without the medication, the symptoms of her disease, called ulcerative colitis, could be debilitating \u2014 persistent diarrhea, fatigue, abdominal pain and blood loss so severe she had once been hospitalized. But Johnson & Johnson, which manufactures the medication, Remicade, and runs the program that helped cover the cost of the drug, said she hadn\u2019t submitted the necessary paperwork.Ms. Mancera, 26, said she\u2019d never received it. (Johnson & Johnson said it could not discuss an individual patient\u2019s case, but it would be willing to discuss Ms. Mancera\u2019s eligibility with her.)Because Ms. Mancera\u2019s insurance didn\u2019t cover Remicade, she would be left to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket. As a doctoral student, that wasn\u2019t feasible. Her annual income was under $50,000. So she turned to steroids, a much less effective alternative, she said.\u201cI feel very powerless,\u201d Ms. Mancera said.Ms. Mancera is among the estimated 129 million Americans who deal with a major chronic disease, like a heart condition or an autoimmune disease. Women are even more likely than men to have such conditions. For many, the cost of treating those diseases month after month, year after year, can prove to be its own chronic problem \u2014 one that can fill people with fear and lead to drastic measures and risky trade-offs.\u201cI will get through whatever this body does or takes me through,\u201d said Shannon Hart, 59, who has had rheumatoid arthritis since she was a child. \u201cBut it\u2019s the financial part of it that scares me.\u201dWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15924,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15925,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15922\/revisions\/15925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}