Thanks to everyone who has responded! I’m looking into savings programs (I’ve found a few good ones for basaglar and apidra so far), and I’m not ruling out a trip to Canada. For those of you who do order medications from Canada, do they ship to you or do you have to go there? Do you have to have a doctor in Canada who approves the prescription? Which companies have you had success with? Thanks so much for all of your help.
Lilly offers a program of free insulin to qualifying individuals. Check it out here:
Good luck
Actually, Basaglar is not much cheaper. Street price is apparently only 15% cheaper.
Also, there is a new savings program from that claims it can save you up to 40% on insulin. In addition to the Humalog family, Lilly provides Humulin and Basaglar. That program can be access at BlinkHealth. There is also a separate Basaglar savings card that will save you up to $150/month.
ps. Note that these savings are not available if you have Medicare and may have other limitations.
Thank you. My pharmacy managed to find me a savings coupon for Tresiba instead, so I’m going to try that for now. I’m waiting for Blink health to start buying Lilly insulin in bulk!! I’d like to try purchasing in Canada, but I’m not sure how that works because I’ve heard you have to have a prescribing physician there who also signs off on the prescription. Do you know how that works? I’m going to try the savings program for Apidra that I found online for my short acting, unless my pharmacist can find something better. I don’t qualify for the Novolog program.
If someone knows the answer to the Canada question, feel free to chime in. My insurance only allows for 30 day fills at a time and one of my meds costs $300 in the states and only $100 in Canada. I’m considering taking a little trip to Toronto.
Thanks for all of your help! You have all been so amazingly supportive!
I remember recently I lost insurance and went about a month stressed about how to get my insulin. There’s a medlink clinic that is sliding scale visits. I had to switch insulins but they offered it to me for 10.00 plus the office visit. This was my life saver. Maybe I your area they have a sliding scale based on income. They based it from my husbands
Call these guys and ask.
I think all you need is to send them your prescription. Some of those mail-order type pharmacies have a doctor on staff who will look at the prescription from your doctor and then write it for you. Which means you would not need a doctor of your own in Canada.
Making a call to them is free. Worth a shot.
EDIT:
From their website. Looks like selling insulin cheaply in the U.S. is their business…
Thank you. I’ll do that today.
For my first 30 years of t1 I used regular and lente insulin, and I only almost died twice. As @drBB said above, you have to live very regimented. If you exercise vigorously you need to vigorously exercise every day at the same time. You need to eat pretty much the same thing every day at the same time every day. AND YOU NEED TO CHECK YOUR BLOOD GLUCOSE EVERY COUPLE OF HOURS.
It certainly is possible to live on regular and lente. It’s just more difficult and not much fun.
Sorry to be such an eeyore, but I would stand at the freeway exit with a sign and a bucket before I would return to the old days.
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It’s pathetic how pharma works in this country. My insurance pays for insulin 80/20, so my portion should be small, right? But their negotiated price on a box of novolog penfill cartridges is almost $1000! PBM/Pharma collusion anyone?
So I looked at Canadian pharmacy prices and the same box is $70 cheaper than if I used my insurance here. Between novolog and Toujeo I could save about $300/mo over what I pay on copays at my local pharmacy!
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So you are gonna do that right?! I mean, why not? What is the downside to it?
But if you haven’t already done this, maybe you want to look at the yearly cost rather than the monthly cost. I know the way mine works, I pay a lot more early in the year until I have met the deductible. Once I hit the deductible, it’s cheaper. So if you don’t pay up early, you never reach the deductible and never get the better cost later.
I’d suggest adding it up both ways for a year and see where you come out on top.
The deal with my insurance is that"maintenance drugs" are not subject to deductible, which is $1000. They continue to be covered at 80/20 until my out of pocket is met, which is $5000. And copays do not count toward deductible. I met my Deductible on my first Dexcom order, but it’s still a long way to $5,000.
I need to sit down and figure this out to the penny.
@Eric2 You know Eddie, I thought the American medical system was pretty good, with minor exceptions, until our last President screwed it up. But that’s another thread that’s likely to get closed😉
My feelings exactly. Getting off it was like being let out of prison. Going back to it would be, well, like put back in. But you can survive on it.
Lantus is only $10/vial this year unless you are on govt insurance (Medicare or Medicaid). I just received my $643 rebate for 2 boxes of pens I paid full price for with my high deductible plan and mail order requirement. Most can just take the savings card to the pharmacy and pay $10.
https://www.lantus.com/sign-up/savings-registration
Thanks for the Canada pricing info. I’m headed up in June and was wondering about how much it would be. No Rx required. And maybe I can try the new ultra fast insulin approved in Canada - Fiasp, I think it’s called. It should be available in March.
There are savings cards for short acting insulins - Apidra, Humalog (only on the U-200) and Novolog plus a free ox of needles - that save about $100 per Rx, up to a max each year. Check their websites. Use every savings you can find. Blink Health hopefully will be carrying other insulins soon. Humalog is currently $333 for a box of 5 pens instead of the $511 I’m charged through insurance.
I use a very inexpensive meter - Wavesense Presto (same as cvs and Kroger brands). The strips are just $18/100 and accurate enough.
Good luck. It shouldn’t be this hard.
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So, am I reading this right? If you have private insurance in the United States, the savings card means that you only pay $10.00 copay per fill? That’s quite reasonable. I’m going to be seeing an endo here shortly (whenever I can get a damn appointment) and will likely be starting low-dose basal and bolus insulin (I’m LADA). I’ve been quite worried about the cost, even though I have good insurance. But $10.00 per fill, even if that is once a month, is really quite affordable! That means my entire diabetes prescriptions would cost me less than $100.00 per three months, including testing strips.
Check it out with your insurance coverage. My insurance plan won’t let you use a savings card and still use the insurance. Hence we went to a FSA to cover deductibles. Even though essentially we are still paying for the deductibles, it doesn’t seem to hurt as much.:
Can’t find any information online about whether I can use the savings card with my BCBS insurance. I’ll have to give them a call when the day comes. It doesn’t appear that my OOP expenses would be too bad even if I can’t use the card: my insurance only charges $60.00 per three month supply of Lantus/Toujeo/etc. and $60.00 per three month supply of Novolog. Afrezza is a “premium” Tier 3 drug, so that would cost $100 per 3 month supply.
Katie, how are you doing? Did you find a way? Please let us know! Many of us are really concerned about you. It is terrible that you would need to be worried about insulin.
I just checked with my insurance company. If it is not on your formulary you only save $100/ vial. and if you don’t have insurance at all, like Katie, you only save $100 per also:(
Katie: if you were on a very high deductible policy (ie cheap) which would accept lantus you could use this card.