Just a quick questions. I am fighting the insurance company once again. I want to get blood testing ketones strips covered and all they will cover is urine strips!
So I am appealing. I mean I pay a lot each paycheck for my medical coverage and they need to cover what I need, not what they want.
So one question I have is how long they foiled wrapped Precision strips are good for? I know urine strips expire after 6 months. My frustration is I need these maybe once every year or so to just check. But with the virus issues we are in right now, I would like to be prepared. And if these foiled wrapped ones last longer, it is a fighting point.
I mean I’m only looking to get a 10 pack at a time, not a bottle of 50 or 100 urine strips.
Thanks for any help I can get.
I use a Keto Mojo meter which is very quick and accurate so test my Keytones every Saturday 6AM to make sure I remain in Ketosis all the time. The test strips are good for 18 months and a vial of 50 strips costs $50 delivered. At that price, it is not worth my time and effort to argue with insurance company over a valuable accurate Keytone test that costs less than $1 per week. This is probably not the answer you are looking for, but just another perspective worth considering.
The urine strips will keep longer than 6 months in an unused sealed bottle. What eventually does them in, is humidity, so store tightly sealed in a cool dry place.
The foil-sealed ones have expiration dates a few years in the future.
They are SUBSTANTIALLY cheaper if you buy the ones intended not for diabetics but for folks on keto diets who want to track their numbers.
I have been T1 for nearly 40 years and while they made sure they sent me home from diagnosis with ketone tests (visually read tablets for urine they were… can’t remember the brand name) I never used them and I have never used any subsequent strips I’ve bought.
I’m with @CJ114 on this one. I use the Precision Xtra strips and they sell for $36 for 30 strips on Amazon. It’s not worth it for me to argue with the insurance to get them to pay for it.
Back In February I was able to prevent a full blown case of DKA by catching this trend before it got away from me. It saved me from going to the emergency room. If my ketone number was worse, it would have given me the confidence to go for emergency help and do it before the DKA was too far along.
I consider ketone test strips as an essential safety treatment for T1D. I will never go without them on my supply shelf and consider the ketone meter and strips just as important as insulin when I travel.
Thanks for the info. And yes, I agree sometimes it’s just not worth the fight but I am so very, very tired of having to fight everything and than I end up paying out of pocket! Why do I have a huge portion of my paycheck go to health coverage but it doesn’t cover what I need. I am really tired of getting a no answer to a simple request.
I would like to have foiled wrapped ketone blood testing strips for emergency situations. And I do believe working in a grocery store environment is an emergency situation right now, since many people do not understand what 6 feet looks like! All I want is to have this in my diabetes tool kit. I know every time I get the urine one, I use one or two when I am feeling sick every five years or so and they go bad because they have been opened, so I need to hunt up new ones. It also amazes me how many pharmacies don’t have them on the shelves. Maybe they do now with everyone doing keto diets, but I remember a while back my poor husband ran all over town trying to find them.
So I now have an expiration date that I can include in my appeal letter and see what happens.
Thanks again and everyone stay safe out there!