Insurance

This may be a little personal, but what insurance do you have and how well does it cover what you need? I am currently on Oregon State insurance and I am having the hardest time getting them to cover anything form test strips to insulin pens. I am in the process of switching to my fiances insurance, but I am just curious if this will be a life long struggle to get the supplies I need or if it gets better.

Everyone's insurance is different. It is all a matter of your employer and what the employer has negotiated with which insurer. I've had many, many different insurances over the years, With every new job and with every new year. We've had insurance that covered everything, no problem, no questions and then the employer decides to change and suddenly nothing is covered. Two years later, new insurance and new coverage, next year, same insurance but they make changes to the coverage and now something isn't covered. It's a mess.
See if you can get your fiance's insurer to give you specifics as far as what is covered. I guess the answer is yes, I don't know if struggle is the correct word, you have no choice, you just take what is handed you but I dread every new year and every job change because you just don't know what you'll end up with.

Navigating insurance can be difficult. I actually wish this community was better able to share everybody's tricks on how to deal with insurance. Unfortunately, if we did this, the insurance companies would probably find out and block all our advances.

I have to be honest. Unless there are dramatic changes, dealing with health insurance is likely to be a lifelong challenge. And while getting coverage for pens may seem hard, you should see some of the difficulty some have had getting coverage for a pump of CGM. But I would give you some bright hope, you are young and have a bright future. Chances are that once you settle into a career, you will be able to get employer provided insurance with good coverage. And once you have made the initial hurdles to establish coverage, it won't be such a hassle.

But in the meantime, every change in insurance coverage will bring a revisit of every old battle. How many strips, what is and isn't covered? What is generic, preferred or non-preferred? How do you get your doctor to intervene and establish medical necessity? You will learn over time to deal with it.

But despite that, most of us have developed our own personal vocabulary of obscenities that we say in our head every time we call our insurance companies.

My husband and I are self employed so we buy our Insurance on the open market. We find the only insurance we can afford is Anthem Blue Cross Lumenious High Deductible. Last year our premiums were 1200 per month with a $6000 deductible. When we got a premium increase this November I called them up and asked what I had to do to lower the premium. I ended up dropping my 2 children in their 20's who were still on my policy and we then had to raise our deductible to $11,000 per year. So nothing basically is covered until we pay that $11,000. So I pay for all my testing supplies, meds, labs, doctor visits and even hopitalization until we hit $11,000. So basically we have a Catastrophic policy. It makes me mad but that is all we can get. Almost all private policies have high co pays and deductibles unless you work for a very good company who has a healthy workforce. The smaller your company and the more conditions you have the higher risk you are. I am just counting the days until Medicare.