Medicare covers the cost of the Dexcom receiver or has for me for every upgrade, I get a new receiver. But yes, Medicare will not cover the cost of a phone, tablet, watch, automobile with Dexcom compatible navigation system, or other devices you may want to use to display your data. The cost of those devices are on you. Medicare, since approximately the advent of the G6 has allowed users, at their expense, as long as they have a Dexcom receiver to display and use the data on their compatible phones to manage their diabetes.
The history of Medicare coverage for CGM was related to CMS finding a way to categorize the device in its coverage criteria without having to totally revamp Medicare regulations. They settled on DME with the receiver being the durable device with an expected lifespan of 3 years. (Back when we had no other choice than receivers, I never had one last 3 years. But just say “Hallelujah!” because who cares how they decided to have Medicare pay for CGM.) Longterm Medicare needs to revamp its coverage to reflect the digital age but that will be a huge, slow, behemoth project. I assume that Dexcom and Medicare will negotiate a contract for G7 coverage and it should be no different than G6 coverage.
Moving on to Omnipod. My understand is that Insulet basically scr*wed up its initial negotiations with Medicare and never really fixed it. They chose to go the pharmacy route which is hugely expensive for most seniors. It seems to me that the Omnipod PDM was no different than the Dexcom receiver and they should have been able to negotiate Part B coverage. But not my problem since I hated pods and had hugely erratic abosrption and adhesive problems with pods.
There was huge pressure from Congress to have CGM covered for Medicare and I don’t think we are are at risk for losing it. The risk is that the whole US healthcare system is flawed and who knows how Medicare will survive the chaos.
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