Political Memes

Because memes aren't journalism:

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/lawsuit-asthma-medication-price-spike-wisconsin/ (Feb 6 2025)

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.

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.