Insurance and glucose strips

No I wish I was but I really have no way to get there. I will do Athens or Huntsville. There is a young lady who has organized one in Athens on her own. She is only a teenager,but last year she got it going.

Hey Cathy,

People sometimes do not understand how difficult living without insurance can be…especially when living with diabetes. My daughter had to be hospitalized two different times for over a week at a shot!! Our insurance does cover a big percent, but even the left over amount makes us fearful to go to the mail box!! ha,ha…

I will send some positive energy your way and wish you good things! I appreciate your reply to this discussion and have compassion for all the families and individuals out there living and fighting with this disease with and without insurance…

Peace,

Kimberly

Chloe’s Mom

Also, be sure not to get discouraged if your appeal gets turned down. Most insurance companies will allow you up to a certain number of appeals (I think my insurance company allows for 3?) before you are categorically denied, and even then, you can have an external appeal done for a small fee. Your health care team will most likely be happy to help you along with the process, as well.

And if push comes to shove, and you really do get denied at every turn, you can always start the process again and try to get coverage for a CGM.

Good luck!

Mine, too. It is nuts! People should be encouraged to test more, not penalized for taking care of their health. Not to mention, of course, that the strips costs should be affordable to begin with. When I look at buying something, I’ve started calculating it in terms of strips–my new currency:) Do I really need this when it could buy me a month’s worth.

I’ve ordered free meters just to get the free strips.

Please let me know how it goes. Am sending all good thoughts that you’ll have positive news to report.

Give the beautiful Chloe a hug from me.

Hey Chloe Slage,
I’ve got Viva Health (I’m in B’ham) and the most they allow me is 250 per month with no copay. Apparently, they allow most people a max of 100 unless your insulin dependent/on a pump. The most you can do is try, and it is always a good idea to get the doc to go to bat for you. I’ve also talked to a lot of parents that depend on the cgms to help out.

BTW, I’ll be at the walk on Saturday if you’d like to meet up.

Hey, We will be at the walk too! "We would love to meet up:) I will email you this Friday with my cell phone number.

We want to get the cgms…still hoping that a miracle will happen and the insurances will start paying for these…wouldn’t that be awesome?

I’ll send you the cell phone number this week…

Kimberly

That is awesome…I wish I lived closer to you or we could come up and get you:)

Take care,

Kimberly

WE use Dr. Moreland at Children’s in Birmingham…We did get them to call our insurance, and the most BCBS of Alabama would allow her was the 300 strips…We did the log thing, sent that in, and they finally came up with the 300 rule…Maybe I should take the advice on here and go for it again to get her more…

I wonder if more Mom’s out there are like me? Crazy checkers…my daughter is a crazy checker too. the least little shake and she is clicking away…I think a kid or anyone should not have to worry them selves about their checking. She is just 8 and such a trooper as it is…I can not crush her and tell her to stop:( That’s just wrong in my opinion…)

I can not tell you how elated I am at the responses to my discussion…Just AWESOME!!

Thanks Ryan! Your Awesome:)

Kimberly
Chloe’s Mom…

Kimberly, I think it’s great that you are allowing her to check as often as she thinks she needs. Since my son was diagnosed I have became a BG nazi. Last night even, his behaviors seemed like he might have been low…and even though the meter said he was fine I checked 3 more times. He’s such a trooper as well, and never gives me problems, even with injections.

I was diagnosed at 15, and I am on the pump. Our endo wants to wait until he has been diagnosed a year before they put him on a pump. I’m looking forward to it.

Isn’t it the truth though. I know I am only supposed to check Chloe during the night like once… I can not control my urges. Maybe their is a name for it:) Called being a good mom! That must be tough having him be three, but good thing he is a good sport with it…I have seen babies at the Dr’s office when we go and it just makes me realize that everyone has situations that are more difficult than others and we all care and support each one with open eyes and compassion. That is awesome that he does not give you trouble with the injections. Chloe likes to give them to herself , it makes her feel all big:) She is on the Animas pump, but sometimes we over ride it and give her injections instead. If she goes high and I do not want to do the pump correction and all, we give the injections too:)

I will let you go for now, and I will keep everyone posted on my glucose issues!!

Kimberly

Can I get a job where you work? Ha,ha:)

Kimberly

My insurance plan has two parts – a prescription plan (administered by CVS/Caremark) and a health plan (United Healthcare). Caremark covers my test strips as a prescription with a co-pay, and UHC covers 80% of strips if I pay out-of-pocket and submit to them.

If one doesn’t work, try submitting the receipts to the other. Since they are completely separate from one another, you just might coverage you didn’t know you had!!

Good luck to you… I test much more often than my doctor would like, but when you’re running low (or high), gotta keep checking every 15-30 minutes or so to make sure you get back to normal, right? Plus, there are the wasted strips due to wet hands, not enough blood, unknown forces, etc.

You must be an amazing mom … I say this to everyone who is raising a child with diabetes. I don’t know how you do it. I don’t know how my own parents dealt with me as a 7-year old with diabetes, even though treatment was much less rigorous back in '81!

We are looking into the cgm now. I was going to wait a bit until some of the glitches were ironed out with them and then get one for her.

Thanks Cody,

Kimberly

hey kimberly this is jo tylers mom his doctor writes his script for 8 a day which we have some left over how many does your script give you we get 200 a month ,which is really 40 short . Since he is at home we dont seem to need as many. The bad part of our insurance is we have to pay out of pocket 500.00 just for scripts before it pays anything .

what monitor does she use?

Hello ,

Our insurance allows 300 strips a month. We home school, so Chloe is monitored closely. She has been going through a shaky thing lately, even if her sugar is 160. So she checks. She uses the Accu check aviva, the one touch mini, and I bought a Fast Track over the weekend since the strips are less then the other two top brands. I found some strips for her fast track on Ebay over the weekend that were 100 strips for 30 bucks, so I bought those… We are looking into the CGM for her. Our insurance requires us to pay for the monitor, then they reimburse us based on the Dr’s recommendation and need. Such red tape…

It just seems like there should be a program out there for these families that need assistance. Even with insurance this disease is very costly. I believe that if a person needs to check their sugar they shouldn’t have to look at the strips and think…Hmmm…if I check my sugar, that is $1.25 cents. Chloe can check sometimes 15 times in a day.

Thanks for your input, I appreciate your concern and compassion.

Kimberly
Chloe’s Mom:)

Strips can cost hundreds but when your insurance won’t help you can go to http://www.americandiabeteswholesale.com/ and they have them like half off the retail price. So what I did is ordered them from there once every 2 months. My doctor wrote me a scrip for 6 a day which was 100 every I think 3 weeks but sometimes I still run out, so I get 100 from that site every two or three months to pick up the slack. You can give that website out if you have troubles also every company gives free meters so just find the strips that are cheak and get one of those meters.
Hope this helps

yea for my insurance accu check is 40.00 copay but the freestyle is 25.00 so I have both but only use free style, then on http://www.americandiabeteswholesale.com/ it’s only 50.00 for 100 strips. So I use the better brand when I run out and the cheaper from my insurace.

If you use FreeStyle there is a Program called FreeStyle Promise that will pay up to $50.00 a month toward your strips. I just enrolled and instean of paying a $90.00 copay I will pay just $40.00 for 250 strips. A great savings!

http://www.myfreestyle.com/promise.html