Access to medicines - please share your experiences

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Next week, a United Nations conference will take place in Geneva, Switzerland, on "Access to medicines in the context of the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including best practices in this regard".

Unfortunately, the conference focuses heavily on the physical aspects and particularly HIV/Aids, and I can't see much in the programme on mental health. I will however have the opportunity to make an oral statement of about 3 minutes on the first day of the conference. There is obviously no medicine for autism, but I would welcome any information you might be able to provide on your (in)ability to access medicines for other health issues, for example co-morbidities such as anxiety or depression. Does your autism mean that you have trouble accessing medicines for physical and/or mental health concerns, and how so? Does your autism affect your ability to pay for medicines (i.e. because you're unemployed/lack health insurance)? Does your autism mean that you can't move to a country where you would have better health coverage? Please feel free to add whatever comes to your mind.

Thanks in advance.

Bump - I can't imagine that no one has anything to say about this???

It is harder for us to get access to health care, mostly because we don't know how to ask for it or are just too wigged out to jump through all the medical industry's smoke and mirrors and hoo-hah. We doubt whether our health problems are valid. We wonder (even with insurance, which for me as a working person is a lot WORSE since the Obamacare fiasco) how we are going to PAY for health care. We try to find the words to describe what we are feeling and sometimes can't because we stress so bad over just being in the Dr.s office.

I am probably more fortunate than many people on the spectrum in a way because I was a sickly child who spent a lot of time in Dr.s offices and learned to navigate the health care system at an early age. Even so, I am a person who tends not to want to seek medical attention until the problem I'm having is pretty much untenable. I've ended up in the ER on IVs with heat stroke twice for example. In the past I waited until I was severely and acutely ill to get help. Now I have chronic and lingering health issues from ignoring symptoms or just wishing illnesses would "go away."

In the past several years made it a point to get preventative care, even though the health care system is getting ridiculous and too expensive for me to navigate. I lost my family Dr. of 17 years two years ago because of Obamacare, and now I get shuttled back and forth between various Dr.s and offices- they seem more concerned about collecting my money than making sure I get care. I have to be more assertive and proactive than in the past, and that's difficult.

I live in the UK. The NHS has saved my life. I would be broke and / or dead if I didn't have free prescriptions and free healthcare. I have been in and out of hospitals and seen 8 different specialities of doctors, since I was a baby I was ill in many ways. I've been on 30+ different prescription medications at some point throughout my life. I could not afford paying for them.

I even got put in a private secure unit once for two weeks at the NHS expense. Cost the NHS £6,000. Cost me nothing.

I've been hospitalised 20 times (most of them in a psychiatric ward or secure unit), all at NHS expense.

Despite its inefficiences and often slowness, I love the NHS.