How many of you are on medicare and where do you get your test strips now that Medicare has limited the vendors who can participate in selling them?
I test about 9 times a day, and I've had no problem when I was getting my strips through Medtronic (other than doing the bg log once every six months, which isn't a problem), but since Medtronic is no longer accepted by Medicare for test strips, I'm concerned about getting a vendor who isn't on top of things. I don't want to have more problems or major delays, as I did have even with Medtronic when I first went on Medicare.
So I'm looking for recommendations as to which Medicare-approved vendors are good to work with. Thanks,
I think there's a clear conflict of interest here and that this is really a horrible thing that they are doing. I'm not sure if they even can be sued but if they can, they ought to be.
I would have been happier if they just said that medicare will only pay a fixed cost reimbursement based on cheapest and let us buy from whomever and we can pay a little extra to get what we think works best for us. They reduce their efforts to a fixed reimbursement and get their faces out of trying to single source control everything. It simply makes no sense money wise and health service response to us all.
I live in Australia, we have Medicare here too. But I get my syringes, strips, socks, some foods, Blood Glucose Meters, Blood Pressure monitors and other things from Diabetes SA. The syringes are free, and the strips are .50 cents per packet depending on the brand. Don't you have a diabetes branch like that in the US?
I am on medicare and get mine from k mart. I received the meter verio one touch free from the company because of low income. make sure your dr does not get an extra lancet, as mine did and I opened it not knowing what was what… not sure how comparable the co pay is w the amount of times you test. I am able to use rhe same needle up to ten times!! Of course the test strips come 50 in a pack and I also got 2 of them and 100 needles. my co pay may have been $20?
I use Medicare Advantage, which gives me three strips, with minimal issues
I then use CVS Advanced for the remaining 3 or so I use for $1 dollar
A day. Which is workable , just don’t expect every strip to be $1.50 each.
I use a Verio one touch meter and their strips. I paid $30 for 100 needles and 100 test strips. They last over 3 months as I only test once per day. After using about 150 needles, I started to see if I could use the same needle more than once to save money. I have used this last needle for nigh on 3 weeks!! Quite happy!!!
