Hey all, I am looking into different health options and curious to see what other T1 diabetics have and what is reccomended. Thanks!
I have BlueCross BlueShield and it’s great with my diabetes. I only pay $20 for my Lantus and $10 for my Humulin R.
Hey,how much do you pay a month ? and what plan do you have with them>
Right now the best option is to get an employer-based plan. It is really prohibitively expensive for someone with a pre-existing condition to purchase an individual plan right now. That being said, I have an employer based Anthem BC/BS plan, and they are really good at authorizing coverage for stuff like pumps & CGMs.
We get ours as a small business, because they let two people make up what they call a small business.
We pay almost $900 per month.
If you dont have options of employer paying, or self employment you might have to look at your state options for people with pre-existing conditions.
Our state has a nice program but you have to be without insurance for something like six months and cannot drop your current insurance just because it is too high.
Lots of stipulations.
You might look on the ADA site, as I think they have listings per state.
Btw, blue cross for us was $1200 a month and that was about six years ago.
Shudder.
Agree with Erin, once you are diagnosed you will have great difficulty gatting new insurance, unless it is through an employer.
Well, not necessarily cheaper at all.
The HMO with the best pump coverage was totally unaffordable for us, and well over $1000 a month.
I picked a lesser hmo and my pump is covered at only 50 percent (currently applying for assistance so I can get another one, which they may or may not give me.)
Well, I pay nothing for my insurance because it’s through my estranged husbands employer (going through divorce, but he still had to cover me). If I recall, he pays nothing for the insurance because he’s union (teamsters). His employer pays 100% of his insurance premiums. I don’t know what kind of plan he has with them, all I know is, it covers generally everything for me, which includes endo appts and especially insulin. Great insurance in my opinion. However, once my divorce is final, his insurance will drop me. Which means I have to search for a new insurance possibly through my employer, which isn’t as good as BCBS. Good luck finding an insurance that best fits your needs.
My husband and I both have Type 2 and have our own business. Because of our age 60 and 61 our insurance premiums are over $1000 per month and I expect them to go up another 10-20% this November. We also have a very high deductible ($6000 per year). So when you are looking at Insurance options check out what the premiums are, the co pays, the deductibles and precisely what they cover. Blue Cross has thousands of plans that differ greatly depending on the size of your company. Usually the larger the company the cheaper the insurance because they can spread out the risk. Small companies usually have much higher costs and premiums. I would agree if you can get it through your employer, even if it seems expensive do it.
I cringe every year when the renewal rates come out.
But I guess we got away lucky with a $500 each deductible.
also remember you can avoid being ripped off if you can manage the field until 2014 then legally no insurance company can treat you any differently than a regular person…by law…no matter what gets overturned this part is the law of the land…
and i hope because prayer is useless that they overturn the indivdual mandate so that way we can cripple the insurance industry you know since were are such a toxic assset and thats why i cannot currently purchase health insurance…
I’m no fan of the insurance companies, but the individual mandate is our only hope for lower premiums because it forces younger healthier people to participate.
I wouldn’t count on lower premiums based on the individual mandate. It certainly hasn’t worked out that way in MA. The premiums were high before the law was passed and they have continued to rise at a good clip. Access is much better but cost control is a chimera.
Maurie
Well that’s interesting and sad too as rising health care costs will eventually bankrupt us. We should have been looking at the MA law to see what worked and what didn’t, when debating the nation plan, but it was so heavily lobbied and demagoged rational thinking was impossible.
i beg to differ… the insurance companies agreement in the deal was they would accept toxic assets(i.e. type 1 diabetes cancer aids) if they could guarentee to offset their costs i.e. all the healthy young people…
soo that being stated if the induvdual mandate is overturned here is the great part; if you don’t want to particpate you don’t have to BUT, LEGALLY every insurance company has to accept all americans without prejudice due to illness( considering the only part of the healthcare law being challenged is the individual mandate)…
sooo since we are such a toxic asset to these private providers of healthcare and don’t have a guarenteed offset of costs two things happen they either adapt to a world in their field of business and really try and make it work, or they go out of business…
which if thye go out of business i highly doubt the U.S. goverment will let it’s population’s healthcare go by the wayside and would be more than happy to incorporate a small tax on all indivduals to cover basic medical care…ie. insulin, basic number of strips, aids therapy, cancer therapy,…
understanding some things extra may needed to be proovided by outside sources hence where one could purchase that extra insurance for dental vision, hospice etc etc etc,…
but it is all relative to the government filling a void created by the burden of the private insurance industry caving in it’s near future burden if the will of the people is to really challenge the indivdual mandate…
but is a likely scenerioat least imho…
Hi Jeremiah -
I’m not sure who you’re differing with.
Maurie
the reply feature is weird badmoon was touting the indivdual mandate, i was trying to explain how the collapse of it actually benefits us in the long run…
keeping in mind that not all of the bill is being fought only the mandate…
Well Maurie has shot down my hope that the individual mandate will help buffer costs, but in it’s absence the companies will have an air tight excuse to raise prices even more. I believe under the law they can charge more, at least for an individual policy, for us “toxic assets”. I know under my companies present plan we get one monthly cost per employee, but that cost is higher since we have a high proportion of older employees. Perhaps they can also raise the premium for everyone if there is a diabetic or cancer survivor on the payroll.
I don’t see the difference between being denied coverage and pricing coverage out of a persons reach. In the end more and more are uninsured.
Agree a single payer system financed by tax revenue would be preferable, because it means everyone pays at least something and everyone gets covered. But under that scenario all the stockholders of insurance companies suddenly loose their equity and all the folks who shuffle all the papers and figure out ways to not pay for this and that loose their jobs. The lobbying to keep that from happening will be fierce, as it was during the recent health car debate.
In the end I have trouble figuring out what to do, but I know a continuation of the status quo is untenable.
my fiscally conservatives business teachers and home ed teacher taught us always that you make an omeltte without breaking a few eggs…
with any change their is a pro and a con and positive to a negative, newton’s(or whomever’s) laws do not some how become absolved because someone would be negatively effected…
you do realize when slavery ended the people who whipped slaves no longer had a job, the sailors who brought them over, the iron makers whom made the shakles, the boat builders whom design custom ships, the guy that auction them off, the man that made bull whips, agriculture became less available and more expenisve, it costs more to do house keeping,
i am sure i could keep going on and on about how the ending of slavery had a negative impact on the economy even into the future, but does that mean by your same theories of not having a negative impact on someone not benefit mankind…
i was watching a college lecture on justice and one of the underlying points of the free market or merit based system is that it only works if its uneven gains(bill gates, micheal jordan) for some that somehow it opens up to ESPECIALLY benefit the least able to succeed(be it social, econimical, advatages one may have)…
think about that last part
also comparing current healthcare plans to what healthcare plans could be soon is futile, since you cannot predict care and coverage until the appleseeds get shaken down and we see how the law fills in the cracks…
while theortically what happened in mass., can repeated itself but i also beleive there are things in place to cap the medical inflation yada yada yada…
the service for price structure has to be realigned under the new guidelines and companies will hesitate to act on anything that effects them negatively until the laws mandates it and then of course it becomes in their interest because the penalty for non compliance is probably(hopefully) pretty high to reduce any inclination of running the table on the system setup and exploiting any defeciences