Post Office Funding Is Also About Keeping People From Dying

COMMENTARY

I know there is a lot of talk about how withholding funds from the U.S. Postal Service is a threat to democracy by creating potential problems with the November election. Not to take away from that, but I would like to be selfish for a moment and look at it from a different perspective. I'd like to talk about how withholding funds from the post office is a threat to my life — and, yes, to the lives of others.

I am a diabetic who is dependent on insulin to survive. I am also the recipient of a kidney transplant who is dependent on other medications to survive.

Insurance companies often require people who need special medication to order it from the insurance company's specialized pharmacy. That means people depend on others to make sure their medications arrive on time. By others, I mean the Postal Service as well as companies like FedEx and UPS.

Twice in the past year, I've had major problems getting medications that I need to survive. One of those times, the insulin — a drug that needs to be kept cold — arrived so late that another shipment had to be sent. It barely arrived in time.

The other incident involved a shipment of drugs that I take to suppress my immune system. I take them because, if I don't, my immune system could very well start attacking my kidney. That would be bad. I don't know how many readers know someone whose kidneys have failed and who have had to go on dialysis as a result, but it's not a fun process. I was very lucky to get one kidney for a transplant.

I'm not going to take a risk and gamble on being able to get a second one.

Here's the thing. Not only am I not alone, I'm comparably not that bad off. There are people with cancer, with high blood pressure, people dependent on blood thinners to avoid strokes and clots.

A recent survey by the Health Policy Institute determined that 131 million adults in the United States, more than 66 percent of the adult population, take prescription drugs. While there has not been a survey of how many people get them by mail order since the pandemic was allowed to spread, the number is believed to be significantly larger than the 20 percent several years ago.
The most detailed information about who gets their prescriptions by mail concerns veterans of the armed services.

The Veterans Administration says that 80 percent of prescriptions are filled through its mail order pharmacy, which uses the Postal Service to fill the prescriptions. Roughly 120 million prescriptions are filled every year by the VA's mail-order pharmacy, with deliveries going every day to 330,000 veterans around the country.

Sens. Gary Peters and Jon Tester wrote to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy last week after getting reports that despite the VA saying that vets usually get their prescriptions within three to five days, some vets were waiting weeks to get their medications.

“USPS needs to immediately cease operational changes that are causing mail delays so that veterans do not needlessly suffer from illnesses exacerbated by delayed medication deliveries,” wrote Peters and Tester, the senior Democrats on the Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs committees, respectively.

“Those who gave so much to serve this country should be able to count on the nation’s Postal Service to deliver their medications in a timely manner.”

There's a lot of politics wrapped up in the discussion of whether the post office needs to be fully funded. While the future of democracy is certainly a worthy topic of discussion, so is the topic of people needlessly dying. That's what could happen if people are unable to get their medication on time.

Diabetics such as myself without insulin could see blood sugars rise so high that a coma is the next step, followed by the possibility of death. A person who is unable to get their blood thinner medication could develop a clot that could lead to death. A person with high blood pressure who doesn't get their medication could have a heart attack, which could be fatal.

Politics is one thing, but can we all agree that we don't want our fellow citizens to die when all it takes to help them is making sure that the mail shows up on time?

Colin Miner, Patch's manager of news and content partnerships, is a kidney transplant recipient who has written about his struggles to get his medication before.