Welcome to day 2 of Diabetes Blog Week 2017. With all the discussion currently and over the last several years about health care in the US, it’s no surprise one of this week’s topics is about cost:
Insulin and other diabetes medications and supplies can be costly.
Here in the US, insurance status and age (as in Medicare eligibility) can
impact both the cost and coverage. So today, let’s discuss how cost
impacts our diabetes care. Do you have advice to share? For those
outside the US, is cost a concern? Are there other factors such as
accessibility or education that cause barriers to your diabetes care?
First I’ll say that I’m incredibly fortunate to work for a large
US company where I have great health insurance.
Of course, great insurance doesn’t mean free health care. So when I saw this blog topic, the question I
wondered about was how much did medical care for my T1 cost last year? I looked up the costs for my prescriptions,
CGM and appointments for 2016, including only the diabetes specific costs. The total spend combining what I paid and
what my insurance paid was almost $15,000.
Shocked? I was. I’m actually a healthy person. But…I need life support.
Most of that cost doesn’t come out of my bank account because of
the coverage I have. The most expensive
individual thing in my world was a surprise to me – it’s the Dexcom CGM –
including a receiver, transmitters and the sensors that I insert under my skin
to read my glucose. Is that an absolute
necessity to stay alive? No. But given that my A1c is at an all time low
of 5.1% I’d say that it’s a pretty significant part of the package that keeps
me healthy today and for a long time to come.
The most ridiculous cost on the list didn’t surprise me at
all. I don’t pay for test strips under
my insurance. But the cost for those was
over $3k last year. If I bought them
retail it would be even higher – CVS charges $1.43 per strip without a
prescription. Many insurance plans
severely restrict the number of test strips they cover each month. But the catch is that one of the keys to
managing T1 is knowing your blood glucose so that you can address it
quickly. Without test strips and with no
CGM, that is impossible. If you’ve ever
seen a sign on the side of the road advertising “diabetes supplies,” now you
know why. People are desperate to get
them at a reasonable cost…and other diabetics are looking for cash to get what
they need to stay alive. Look around and
you’ll see them, those signs at intersections and freeway exists. Sometimes they’re as clear as to say “test
strips,” I saw one just last week on my way home from work. Though I admit I never saw them before I
needed them!
I don’t want to make this political, so I’m not going to dive into
questions about the ACA, AHCA or whatever else we might eventually wind up with
in the US. But I’ll say this much –
insulin isn’t a medication I take to be healthier than I would be without
it. I don’t take it to cure a disease. I take it over and over again, day after day,
because it is keeping me alive. Alive
and HEALTHY. But because I need that
insulin, I have one heck of a pre-existing condition. And because most pharmaceuticals in this
country are insanely expensive, I’m a pricey patient. I said up front that I’m incredibly fortunate
to have the coverage that I do. But as
much as I’m not afraid of Type 1, I’m afraid of what cost I might eventually
have to bear to stick around. It’s a
steep cost financially, but an equally or greater cost emotionally to
consider. And that’s coming from one of
the lucky ones.
Interested in what other people are saying about this topic? Check out their blogs here.
If you missed my post from day 1 about the unexpected benefits of diabetes, get caught up here.
Interested in what other people are saying about this topic? Check out their blogs here.
If you missed my post from day 1 about the unexpected benefits of diabetes, get caught up here.
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