TAMPA, Fla. — Like most 12-year-olds, life moves fast for Amaris Molina.

Between keeping up with schoolwork, walking her dogs, and competing in beauty pageants, she is always on the go. But something makes her describe every day as a "carefully-calculated equation."

In April 2021, Amaris was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. She now needs insulin to eat and live every day. Unlike type 2 diabetes, type 1 is not preventable and currently has no cure.

“When I was diagnosed at 10, I was super confused because I had to change up my whole lifestlye,” Amaris said. “But it kind of makes you see life in a different view.”

Amaris' diagnosis was a change for the entire Molina family, and her mother, Caneisha, says there are a lot of sleepless nights, worrying about her daughter.

“You can’t even fathom," Caneisha Molina, Amaris’ mother, said. "I want to say maybe if I sleep five hours - those five hours are not sound asleep it’s making sure that she’s good because she can die.”

The financial pressures of living with type 1 diabetes don't help either, with the Molina family spending near $240 per month on insulin, but closer to $1,000 for all of Amaris’ supplies.

According to the American Diabetes Association, diabetics can rack up close to $10,000 in medical expenses every year.

“How can you plan?,” she said. “How can you have enough money for something that is so needed for my daughter to live? So I just do whatever I have to do because to me, this is the most important.”

Even with insurance coverage, Caneisha said it’s difficult to balance the expenses of insulin.

“I hate to even throw away the insulin vials after the 30 days because there may still be more in there,” she said. “You have to discard them and you think about people who don’t have the money or can’t afford it.”

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) calls insulin affordability a crisis and has been advocating for a price cap for years. 

“Just within the past decade, the price has doubled,” said Laura Whitton, JDRF’s vide president of government relations. “It’s just so hard, especially with the economic climate that we’re in now with insulin continuing to go up in price. It’s just a lot harder.”

On Wednesday morning, Eli Lilly announced plans to cut prices for older insulins later in the year and immediately expand a $35 cap on costs for insured patients.

Whitton said Eli Lilly’s plan is a step in the right direction, but wants to see more done.

JDRF is currently pushing for a cap on copays for commercial insurance plans and a solution to get people without insurance better access to insulin.

For Caneisha, she says Lilly’s price cap is a big win for families with type 1 diabetes and she sees the light at the end of the tunnel for her daughter. 

“This is something, ultimately, that she has to live with forever,” Caneisha said. “And she can only be on my insurance until what, after she graduates from college? It’s so many things that I think about and that financial part, it’s just a lot of money. It’s a lot of saying ‘ok, let’s save this aside.’”

Meanwhile, Amaris refuses to be defined by her condition and wants people to understand what she lives with every day.

“It’s not just because you ate the wrong thing or something because people think that I got diabetes because I’m fat or didn’t eat the right things that I needed to,” she said.

Lilly said it will cut the list price for its most commonly prescribed insulin, Humalog, and for another insulin, Humulin, by 70% in the fourth quarter, which starts in September. The drugmaker will immediately cap monthly out-of-pocket costs at $35 for people who are not covered by Medicare’s prescription drug program.

Last month, the Inflation Reduction Act put a $35 monthly cap on the out-of-pocket insulin cost for seniors enrolled in Medicare.