'It affects everything': Manitoba diabetics want province to expand insulin pump coverage
'To put it bluntly, they have the worst program in the provinces and territories,' Diabetes Canada says
Every morning, Jen Dyck checks her blood sugar levels, administers insulin and grabs a snack before she picks up her baby to feed her.
The 29-year-old mother of two has Type 1 diabetes and uses an insulin pump to regulate her access to the hormone.
"It affects everything," she said about the disease. "Even at night when I wake up to feed my daughter I ask, 'What's my sugar?' … If I were to pick her up and my sugar is low, I could drop her."
On top of affecting her health, it profoundly affects her income, said Dyck, who lives in Winkler, Man., about 100 kilometres south of Winnipeg.
She estimates she spends nearly half of her net income on prescription medications to treat the diabetes she's had since she was a toddler — and that doesn't include the expensive insulin pump she needs to replace every five years.
That's because Manitoba has some of the least comprehensive coverage for insulin pumps in Canada, Diabetes Canada officials say.
"To put it bluntly, they have the worst program in the provinces and territories," said Joan King, the Western Canada government relations director for Diabetes Canada.
The province covers up to 90 per cent of the cost of insulin pumps and the associated supplies until a person is 18, at which point, that coverage ends. It's the only province other than Quebec that has such low coverage.
In B.C. and Ontario, insulin pumps are covered every five years for anyone who is medically eligible under Pharmacare rules.
Dyck said the costs far exceed her family's insurance, which means they can't afford many things, including visiting her husband's family in Belize.
"We can't afford to," she said.
"My mother-in-law … offered to send us money to help us pay for it. I just don't think that's right, that in a country like Canada, somebody else should have to send money from a country that's a Third World country to try and help us."
Dyck said she's even considered moving to Ontario for better medical coverage, but her whole life is in Winkler.
"Ontario's right next to us and they have coverage for everyone. It's hard not to consider that," she said.
"I shouldn't have to move away from my family and my life here to afford to live."
Diabetes Canada estimates 300,000 Canadians live with Type 1 diabetes.
Winnipegger Jessica Williams is among them.
Before the 25-year-old got her insulin pump, life was challenging, she said.
"We would go to my brother's football games and after the football game, we go and get ice cream, but I wouldn't want ice cream because I didn't want a needle, or we'd be out, you know, sitting watching a movie and get popcorn. Well I don't want any popcorn because I don't want to needle," Williams said.
She considers herself lucky because she works for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and her insurance covers her insulin pump and the other things she needs to manage the disease.
"It boggles my mind that something that has changed my life so completely is being withheld from someone else because they come from a different place in the world, and it just hurts," she said.
Manitoba Health Minister Cameron Friesen said the government provides coverage for many of the essentials for adults living with diabetes, including most medications, insulin, needles and blood glucose test strips.
"We will continue to examine ways to improve outcomes for Manitoba patients living with diabetes, just as we have in the past year by making high-cost insulin products more accessible and committing to develop a diabetes prevention strategy," he said in an emailed statement.
But according to King, from Diabetes Canada, that's just the bare minimum.
It is a steep commitment up front for governments to provide coverage for insulin pumps, but ending coverage at age 18 also costs government because of health complications, King said.
"If somebody is forced to go off of the insulin pump, then they may revert back to poor blood sugar control, which puts them at higher risk for the longer-term implications of diabetes," she said.
People can suffer heart attacks, strokes or kidney failure, go blind or even require amputations if their diabetes gets out of control.
King thinks it's imperative that Manitoba catch up with provinces like B.C., Ontario, Alberta and the territories, which all offer full coverage for insulin pumps, regardless of age.
"They really need to take a hard look at adults with Type 1 diabetes because Type 1 diabetes doesn't go away. It's a lifelong disease," she said.
