According to the lawsuit, Cole Schmidtknecht suffered from asthma all his life. He managed it with daily inhaler doses of the medication Advair Diskus and its generic equivalents.
That would be a “long term inhaler.” Like taking any daily prescription. Not a “rescue inhaler” which acts in the short term to provide relief to acute symptoms. Further down:
[OptumRX] said that a review of Cole’s claims showed that on the day he visited the pharmacy, he did buy a different asthma medication, generic Albuterol, for a $5 co-pay on Jan. 10 — a medication that it says he also obtained in October 2023. His case was handled “consistent with industry practice and the patient’s insurance plan design,” the company said.
Trunk, though, said Wednesday that the $5 generic prescription Cole filled was for his rescue inhaler, not the Advair Diskus inhaler that he took daily. He said Cole was not able to fill his Advair Diskus prescription because it had suddenly become too expensive.
The parents are 100% right, and the company damn well knows it. They’re fucking lying.
The death occurred on Jan 21, 2024, ten days after trying to get his prescription filled. He only found out that the price had gone up when he went to the drugstore. Lawsuit is about OptumRX not giving a legally mandated 30 days’ notice for drug price increases.
Goddam UHC. Ever see anyone have an asthma attack? It’s like watching someone drown in air, clawing at their throat and panicking. Just terrifying. Those UHC motherfuckers need a million more Luigis.
I have, many times… Didn’t look quite like that, but was still terrifying. With asthma that bad, even when not having an attack, is a regular struggle to breathe.
Anyone who would jack up necessary asthma medicine to the point it’s unaffordable should be hooked up to a histamine nebulizer and left there until they learn just how important it is to be able to breathe.
His case was “handled consistently with his insurance plan design” simply means they killed him for profit. If they designed the plan to have price jumps like that then they knew it would result in deaths.
Because memes aren’t journalism:
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/lawsuit-asthma-medication-price-spike-wisconsin/ (Feb 6 2025)
That would be a “long term inhaler.” Like taking any daily prescription. Not a “rescue inhaler” which acts in the short term to provide relief to acute symptoms. Further down:
The parents are 100% right, and the company damn well knows it. They’re fucking lying.
Oh yeah, OptumRX is the UHC in-house mail order pharmacy.
The death occurred on Jan 21, 2024, ten days after trying to get his prescription filled. He only found out that the price had gone up when he went to the drugstore. Lawsuit is about OptumRX not giving a legally mandated 30 days’ notice for drug price increases.
Goddam UHC. Ever see anyone have an asthma attack? It’s like watching someone drown in air, clawing at their throat and panicking. Just terrifying. Those UHC motherfuckers need a million more Luigis.
I have, many times… Didn’t look quite like that, but was still terrifying. With asthma that bad, even when not having an attack, is a regular struggle to breathe.
Anyone who would jack up necessary asthma medicine to the point it’s unaffordable should be hooked up to a histamine nebulizer and left there until they learn just how important it is to be able to breathe.
I don’t know if there are enough UHC executives for that, but I like the spirit
Well, they’ll keep backfilling positions, so eventually someone who likes not being targeted and will change things.
And when they run out of UHC execs, there are plenty more execs and billionaires who should have a Luigi with their name on them…
His case was “handled consistently with his insurance plan design” simply means they killed him for profit. If they designed the plan to have price jumps like that then they knew it would result in deaths.
New slogan for Ken Klippenstein’s substack 😁