$45 buys me 300 strips out of pocket… For the strips I prefer… I decided long ago that I would never allow an insurance company dictate how many or what kind of strips I could or would use. Strips are not out of reach for most of us if we shop around-- but if we paid the retail price of the strips that our insurance covers, we’d go broke…
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Hey, I don’t get free strips either, Jenny., I wish. Your point does nothing to address the fact that testing often can prevent issues with surprise highs and lows. for my copay, I’ve gladly purchased roughly a quarter million strips since I became diabetic. Some people don’t want to bother to test. Some people eat too many carbs. Some people would rather go to the movies than pay the copay for strips. Whatever. I am not about to apologize for frequent testing. It’s kept me alive and in good shape. I can’t help that some folks have no insurance. If they don’t then a good option is buy store brand strips. Or do without something far less important. For decades my doctors have filled out quantity override forms once a year, to make sure I get the number of strips I want. it’s that simple, if you have group insurance.
phoenixbound,
I’m not sure why you are reading my post as suggesting there is something wrong with a lot of testing. I recommend it myself.
My point was only directed at those who do have trouble getting sufficient strips. Some are outside the US, many are Type 2s with insurance through plans that limit access. Some are on classic Medicare.
Sam19,
What kind of strips are you buying at that price? The generics have been recalled and have a troubled history.
The gray market that buys prescription strips from the poor and elderly for very little and then resells them for more is quite troubling, to say nothing about fraudulent. There is a sign from one of those shysters at the end of my rural road. It is sad to see people given incentives to sell the strips that could used correctly could help them get healthier. The town near us has low incomes and quite a few diabetic amputees.
what is the point of telling someone who can’t afford strips, that they can’t afford strips?? I think, by definition, they already know that. ergo, I don’t know why you mentioned it in your prior post, which was a reply to my post about how I test at least 12x a day prior to CGM. To me, it was like you are telling me not to mention that I test a lot, lest I make someone jealous that they can’t afford to do so. Lets move on, please.
@Jenny i buy truetest strips for 44.99 for 300 on Amazon. They were rated by consumer reports as second only to freestyle in accuracy and repeatability— and only slightly second to freestyle. All other brand name strips were rated much worse than them. I can get one touch strips at no cost through my insurance but I like the truetest so much more that I chose to pay out of pocket for them.
Countour next strips are about $68 /300
Relion prime are about 54 /300 at Walmart.
The local pharmacy prices one touch ultra at $172 / 100… They were rated poorly by consumer reports, even though they are “brand name”, I personally saw very poor consistency with back to back testing with them compared to truetest. These are the only option my insurance covers. I would rather pay out of pocket for something else. Also— the truetest require .4 microliter of blood vs the onetouch ultras 1.0ml
Edit to add-- I’ve tried to encourage others who can afford it here to purchase inexpensive strips out of pocket instead of let the insurance game lead to price gouging across the board as its done forever… It’s the only recourse we have— but unfortunately my little social movement didn’t really get off the ground because people are convinced that more expensive must be better
sam did you see a rating for Contour Next strips? I like 'em. (don’t like the meter much. cant see it in sunlight)
I don’t recall, phoenixbound… This was several years ago. The onetouch was the meter the doctors office gave me when first diagnosed… I used it for a couple months then went on a search for something that worked better… Research in consumer reports led me to the truetest and I’ve never looked back. I have heard good things via word-of mouth about the contour next but never used myself or actually researched them.
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Sam19,
Thanks so much. I will check out the truetest strips. There is so much change between models of meters over time that it seems that every time I recommend a non-major brand meter, a year or two later they change the model and the thing stops working.
The Amazon reviews are good for the truetest (though they have been good for every off-brand meter I’ve recommended in the past until suddenly they aren’t. ) But the price can’t be beat and does make it possible for people to test as much as they need to.
Thanks!
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No prob. My insurance covered them for a while (at a “retail” price of something like $70/100)… Then when my insurance stopped the coverage I just decided to find the “real” price myself… I wouldn’t trade them for anything else. The meters are simple and don’t have a lot of flashy features like some others (they work with trueresult and true2go meters) but if you just want to know your blood sugar and not play games with insurance they can’t be beat.
hey sam (and anyone else who has tried them), have you found those truetest strips to be more accurate than the relion ones from walmart? the relion ones are quite accurate in good range (like less than 140) but as my bg gets higher, they go wonky, showing up to to a 30 point differenc to my accuchek meters. im left to subtract 20 or 30 points if i see a number like 170 or 200.
I haven’t used the religion strips… But I think all strips probably get more wonky the higher the levels are. For an analogy-- if you have a gallon jug you can probably determine how many quarts of liquid are in it within a reasonable margin of error almost every time with your eyes… With a bathtub, you probably can’t— same concept applies to any measurement.
A guy from Walmart sent me a new Region meter several years ago for review. We had an older one that was okay. But the one he sent read 30 mg/DL higher even in the low 100 mg/DL range. I emailed him about it and not so surprisingly never heard back.
Re the Ultras. I have had 5 of them. The old plain Ultras and the two Minis are very good, testing very close to each other and lab. The Ultra2 was terrible. Same strips, very different performance.
It was the ultra mini that I had major inconsistency with… I’m sure different products probably work better for some people than others but it was not a good fit for me…
Not surprising. Dr. Bernstein was recommending the Aviva meter at the time when I had two of them that tested dramatically higher than lab. The reason I had two was because the company recalled the first one as being defective. The second one was just as bad.
Stinks, though, that something that expensive has such poor accuracy. Strips for brand name meters are more than twice as expensive since I was diagnosed in 1998 but the accuracy isn’t a whole lot better.
I’ve had a different experience w the Avivas, which I’ve used ever since they came out. I always check my bg in the car before leaving the parking lot of the lab, and never had I had more than a couple points off. I guess your meter may vary in addition to YDMV. 
I did a research project in a high school class many years ago (I know not exactly the pinnacle of academia). But it had some interesting parallels to this. I had happened come to know that a certain generic ziplock sandwich bags held a seal much better than a certain brand name sandwich bag. The generic ones cost much less…
So I designed an experiment to prove what I already knew-- simple enough in this case, I filled a number of each bag with water and hung them upside down and was prepared to measure the leakage from each… This proved to be unnecessary because every single brand name bag completely failed, and leaked entire contents, and every single generic bag held its seal and didn’t leak at all.
Then it got interesting… As part of the research I showed people the experiment proving that the inexpensive bags were superior even though they were much cheaper. It was remarkable how many people still said they would continue to buy the brand name bags, at a higher price. The most common reasoning was that “they are better.” Even though it had just been clearly demonstrated that they were nowhere near as good…
Point being, the consumption patterns of human beings is not always a rational behavior and we are very easily influenced by blatantly false perceptions about what is better and what is not… And if something has a higher price tag we often believe it to be better even when faced with clear indisputable evidence to the contrary.
Well my decision about meters was based on testing with a batch of them at the lab, right before lab draws and seeing how the matched. My ultras were consistently closest.
the Aviva caused me a lot of misery, as I got it when my doctor put me on Lantus, at too high a dose, but since it was reading 30-40 mg/DL high, I didn’t see hypos, though I had the symptoms. Eventually my heart beat was so high I got sent to a cardiologist who wanted to put me on a beta blocker. When I changed meters, all became clear, and I dropped the Lantus and my pulse calmed down, but if I hadnt ignored the cardiologist and had taken the beta blocker, I could have had a serious hypo.
great analogy, thanks sam!
I had sort of a weird thing with meters a couple of years ago (2013?) when my doc was like “you want Bayer, your insurance company likes them more” (although the copay remained the same?) so I said "what the hell and switched from the OneTouch, which I’d used for as long as I can remember (the 1980s??) to the Bayer meter. I immediately noticed higher BG readings and was sort of like “WTH??” but I just rolled on with it. At the same time, I’d also done my weird 33 basal rates (ponging back and forth every 1/2 hour between .8U/hr and .775U/hr to fake a .7875U/hr…) and had switched from Sof-Sensor (Harpoons) to Enlites. So that was 3 big variable shifts all at the same time but my A1C which had rattled between 5.2-5.4 went down to 5.0-5.1 and, most recently, despite a sucky year for exercising (long, separate story…) to 4.9. Part of me wonders if the OneTouches were calibrated low so I had a whiff of bias in there and that maybe the new meter calibrated a shade differently is the reason for the lower A1C? I dunno…
I used many LifeScan meters over the years. I’d say they read low also, in comparison to several other brands. I don’t like the physical aspects of the Contour Next, but dang, it sure seems to read consistently over a wide range of bg’s. I trust it’s readings more than other meters, although I’d say the Verio (a LifeScan meter) is decent too.