Who Is the Nick Jonas Super Bowl Ad Really For?
Just after the first quarter of last night’s Super Bowl, CBS aired an ad with Nick Jonas for Dexcom G6, the continuous glucose monitoring system (CGM).
The fantasy Jonas sells in the commercial is a sleek, tech-centric vision of diabetes, and an end to blood glucose testing with fingersticks. But for many people with diabetes, CGMs like Dexcom are as unaffordable as they are aspirational, and both the contents and cost of the $5 million ad have some diabetics ticked off.
Jonas has been on a multi-day media cycle promoting the ad under the pretense of empowerment and awareness. Beyond Type 1, the nonprofit that Jonas helped found, tweeted, “This Sunday, the entire country will spend 30 seconds thinking about diabetes care. That's huge. That's a start.”
However, as former MTV star Dave Holmes writes for Esquire, many people with diabetes, particularly those attuned to the insulin crisis, are critical of the ad . At a time when 1 in 4 insulin dependent diabetics are rationing the lifesaving medication, it can feel grotesque to bring attention to anything else. Others argue it reinforces the stigma around fingersticks — a normal part of life with diabetes that can look scary or gross to people without diabetes.
For Jonas, Dexcom fits into a world bursting with cutting edge technology, like Roombas, drone-delivered packages, and self-driving cars. But just as self-driving cars remain a Silicon Valley fantasy, a life with diabetes free of fingersticks doesn’t exist either — even for Dexcom users. Calibrations between blood-based readings and sensor readings are periodically necessary, sensors sometimes fail, and worst of all, millions of people in the U.S. lose or change their health insurance each month, meaning CGM coverage is precarious for all but the most economically secure. With Dexcom G6 sensors retailing for $350/month out of pocket and up, GoFundMe campaigns for CGMs abound.
Dexcom and Jonas likely anticipated this criticism, saying they’ll continue building awareness around CGM “access” over several weeks, in partnership with a handful of pharmaceutical and device-funded nonprofits, including Beyond Type 1, JDRF, the College Diabetes Network, and Taking Control of Your Diabetes. But it’s a stretch to imagine awareness or access was ever anyone’s goal.
The real targets of the ad are likely affluent people with type 2 diabetes and investors. The focus on fingersticks has long been the company’s selling point to people with type 2, a gigantic and growing market. After a somewhat tumultuous year, investors are also primed to applaud the ad after the company reported positive returns on similar ads during its last investor call.
Advertising under the gloss of awareness is not a new part of pharmaceutical or medical device marketing (although direct-to-consumer marketing of these products is banned virtually everywhere except the U.S.). Nor is it new for Jonas, who has worked on campaigns for health insurance and pharmaceutical giants Cigna and Bayer. What is new is a vocal and activated diabetes community who doesn’t want to settle for awareness alone, and who knows that the real face of diabetes is less handsome devil in a leather jacket and Apple watch, and more mom crying in a parking lot outside the drugstore.
If California Manufactures Public Insulin, Could Washington Buy It?
That’s the idea behind a new bill making its way through the state legislature.
Last fall, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a potentially groundbreaking law making the state the first to pursue its own line of generic drugs — including at least one form of insulin. Now WA #Insulin4All, the Washington state chapter of T1International, is working to pass a bill aimed at building on the California action. The bill would allow the state to enter into partnerships for producing, purchasing, and distributing generic and biosimilar drugs with state manufacturers and NGOs. While it leaves the door open to manufacturing things like insulin itself down the line, the bill is geared more toward readying the state to buy publicly manufactured drugs from other states, and does not carve out budget for exploring public manufacturing at this time.
Madi Johnson, a fitness and yoga instructor from outside Seattle and member of Washington #Insulin4All, recently testified in support of the bill. She says she’s optimistic about the bill’s passage, with zero speakers testifying against it at the same hearing. The bill has sponsorship from the House Health Committee chair. The bill is now making its way through committees in the state Senate.
Other states:
Utah is voting on a bill to allow pharmacists to sign off on prescriptions for some drugs previously prescribed by a doctor, including insulin. (Per Utah #Insulin4All)
Montana is debating an insulin copay cap on state-regulated plans. One legislator, Rep. Jessica Karjala, got into a spat with a handful of #Insulin4All advocates on Twitter over the legitimacy of the plan.
In New York, legislators are looking to lower the copay cap on state-regulated plans from $100 to $30.
Speaking of copay caps, CBS Chicago talked to a couple who were caught completely off guard when they realized their plan wasn’t covered by Illinois’s copay cap.
Small doses
Last week,a Washington Post feature explored the connection between COVID-19 and new onset diabetes. Viruses have long been considered a trigger for type 1 diabetes, and cases of new onset diabetes post COVID-19 infection have appeared since the earliest days of the pandemic. Interestingly, some cases appear to have characteristics of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes.
Scientific American published a piece about vaccine prioritization for people with disabilities. Meanwhile, California has done away with prioritization for high-risk adults under 65.
Journalist Libby Watson talked with a type 1 diabetic about his health costs in Sick Note, her newsletter about the myriad failures of the American health care system. (Subscribe! It’s great.)
In cozier news, Harney & Sons sell a tea named in honor of Banting & Best, insulin discoverers. Proceeds go to T1International. (h/t K. Whitney-Daniels)
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That’s all for this week’s — and last week’s — Shot. That’s right. I missed a week. My goal for this project has always been to keep the community informed on a regular basis, with newsletters out every week. However, insulin news last week was on the thin side, and in an effort to keep it fresh and not get burned out, I opted to take a break. Feel like I missed something important? My inbox is always open: theshotnewsletter@gmail.com or just reply to this message.
Wishing you as many or as few fingersticks as you desire.
-EP