How many of you have the same situation I have? I am curious. My insurance company will only allow so many strips a month for our daughter Chloe. She is 8 years old and sometimes we have to use more then the insurance will allow with our coverage. When this happens, we are forced to buy them out of pocket which runs in the hundreds additional a month. Do other families have this problem? Does anyone have any advice. When we do run out, we do use a less expensive strip and monitor. The “Fast track” monitor and strips. I go on ebay and try to find them for her. This situation adds extreme stress to our family financially.
I use twice the monthly allowed amount of test strips for my insurance, so my endocrinologist went through the pre-authorization process with my insurance to approve the amount I need. Have your doctor write a prescription and fight your insurance for coverage of the prescribed amount.
I get 500 strips every three months, thats 5 to 6 a day. I get by with that, except when I forget my meter at work, like today. Does anyone know what the actual production costs of these stupid things are? I bet its something like 2cents each. I can’t wait for the day test strips will be unnecessary.
My son (who is 3) and I are both type I. We use about 220-250 strips a month each. I’ve never had the issue come up. Our insurance allows 300 a piece per month also.
Call BC/BS and ask them if you can show proof of needing more than 300 tests ie keep a log showing you test more than 10-12 times a day if that will give you the coverage for extra strips. That is what I had to do with my insurance. BTW I am from Alabama as well, I live in Decatur.
Hi Kimberly,
I haven’t run into your problem exactly, but I was upset by how much my co-payments have been. Only a % is covered. So I called up my health plan and got names of mail order places. They fill your scripts on a 3 month basis and are a lot cheaper than using a drug store.
Amy:)
Hello! I think you can fight your insurance company. You will have to have your daughters pcp submit a letter stating why your daughter is overutilizing her strips. Physician should be able to explain if she has been experiencing a lot of hypo or hyper blood sugar. You should also send a letter insurance companies tend to listen to families a lot more. Hope this helps
Well, saying that since it works in the UK and Canada means it should work here isn’t a very good argument. First of all, the differences in population is enormous. The US has over 300 million people, whereas the UK has around 60, and Canada has less than 35. On top of that, the taxes in both of those countries are waaaayyy higher than our own. Their sales tax alone tends to be 20% or more. Universal health care sounds nice, but it gets paid for one way or another. It’s just everybody else footing the bill. Not to mention all the bureaucracy, waiting periods, treatment limitations, etc. that are involved with trying to get treated under a national health service. Our health care system definitely needs an overhaul from top to bottom, but universal is not the way to go IMO.
Plus a lot of people in Canada come to the U.S. for surgery because there is no waiting list and the Government doesn’t decide who is most important. I have a friend in Canada who has a tumor on her bladder and she had to wait 6 months for an MRI and they didn’t know if it was maligant or not. The longest I have had to wait for an MRI for anything has been less than a week.
I am lucky enough to work for a company that provides me with phenomenal health care coverage. No premiums, the co-pays are pretty low, and (best of all) they don’t have a cap on how many strips they’ll cover a month. So I just had my endo write a script for 600 strips a month, and even if I don’t use them all every month, at least I don’t have that worry hanging over my head whether or not I’m gonna have enough to last the month. I’ve honestly never said this about an insurance company before, but Aetna really is an awesome company. 600 test strips for $35? 100% coverage on my pump and supplies? I’ll take that any day.
But yeah, you can definitely fight the insurance company on the coverage limitations. Generally you have to go through their appeals process, providing documentation that your daughter does indeed test more times than her coverage allows. You can have her endo write a letter as well, outlining the necessity of having your daughter test X times a day.
I was in the same situation. I had my doctor write a prescription for more strips per month. Thankfully, the insurance company didn’t argue. Same thing happened with syringes. My doctor wrote the Rx for 4 syringes a day & one month I had a lot of correction injections & ran out. At least syringes are cheap & I bought some until I could reach the dr’s office for a new prescription.
Hope your insurance accepts doctor’s orders for more strips. You’ve got enough to handle without having to fight with them!
Even with the co-pay, strips are expensive with my insurance.
You are so lucky! We actually moved to Alabama from Louisiana over a year ago because our insurance there with my husbands company did not cover ANY of her strips…nightmare. She was six when she was diagnosed, so needless to say, we sold our home, down sized a bunch, but I find it so difficult to believe that I should have to tell my 8 yo that she is checking her sugar too much. She gets shaky a lot, for know reason sometimes, but I feel that for piece of mind for goodness sake, she should not have to feel like she can not check …we even home school now so that we can keep good tabs on her and her condition. Trust me, she was happy with that decision. Ha…
Thanks for your compassion and I appreciate your advice!
Will insurance cover a cgms for her? I just recently got MM’s and I love it. Also who is your CDE? I can contact mine and see if she has any advice on how to get more strips out of BC/BS. M
I would love to have this information. I have not seen this commercial. We had to move because our previous insurance did not cover any thing with the strips! We sold our home, down sized and moved to Alabama where my husbands insurance does have better coverage for her diabetes…our home is smaller, but our hearts are bigger!!
Thanks for your response, and I would LOVE to have you share your info with me:)
Thank you Cassie! The both of you have type 1. Have you had this condition all your life? Do you wear a pump? your son?
Our insurance allows 300 per month too, but our daughter checks every time she feels the least bit of a shake…out of fear I am sure. I just can not find it in my heart to tell her to stop checking…I just wish there was a program that we could enroll in that could help out with the overage when needed…
Thanks for your response, and I appreciate your thoughts:)
Thanks for your advice, I can see that I am going to have a busy time on the phone tomorrow trying to up her strip limit…I am so grateful for all of the great advice everyone is giving us:)
Are you walking this Saturday in downtown Birmingham? The JDRF walk?
Does anyone know what the actual production costs of these stupid things are? I bet its something like 2cents each. I can’t wait for the day test strips will be unnecessary.