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Comment by EarthIsHome | Hacker News Reader

> An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure.

We have the technology. The cure is cheap. It's criminally insane that the US doesn't make life-saving or life-bettering drugs more available for free.

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The market is self regulating don't worry ;)

Yes, but isn't the real 'cure' in modifying our diets so it doesn't happen in the first place? At this point, tax and put warnings on sugar and carb-rich foods. Use the revenue to subsidize healthier foods to offset the regressive effect of a sugar/carb tax. I know about food deserts and fresh food availability, but the real way to fix this issue is upstream from already having diabetes.

You seem to be confusing Type I and Type II diabetes, a pretty common error. Insulin of the sort referenced in this article is used primarily for Type I diabetes, which has little or nothing to do with sugar or carb-rich foods.

The top-level post was about combined rates in the US, so I think they were commenting on that. Type II rates in the US is about 20X that of Type I

The linked article mentions Type I specifically also: "The annual cost of insulin for people with Type 1 diabetes in the U.S. nearly doubled from $2,900 in 2012 to $5,700 in 2016, according to the most recent data available from the Health Care Cost Institute."

Insulin of this type is used primarily to treat Type I diabetes.

Right, but the top level post was talking about the different but related topic of overall diabetes prevalence.

I was talking about combined rates, not just diabetes treated with the insulin generics discussed in the link.

How is modifying our diets a "cure" for Type I diabetes?

The only "cure" I know about for Type I diabetes is insulin, the subject of TLA and as far as I can tell, the subject of GP's comment also. Your comment appears to be the first introducing the idea of diet, which suggests that maybe, as I said, you're confusing diet-related Type II diabetes (not the subject of the article) with Type I diabetes (the subject of the article).

If we could solve the type 2 diabetics it would reduce the number of people living with it by 90%.

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