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Supposedly the Price of Diabetic Treatment has increased 5% between 2012 & 2013

runner2009

runner2009

Well-Known Member
Messages
333
Location
San Francisco
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Insulin
Dislikes
Diabetes
I found this article interesting about the fact that Diabetic Treatments for the disease alone is the most expensive. It summarized the following:

"It is not unlikely that patients with type 2 diabetes could have expenses for their drugs that could exceed over 500 dollars a month in just copays. "

http://goo.gl/eOINAO

I received my first prescription script for test strips with new insurance and the copay for 400 is about 8 cents(US) a strip. I would pay anywhere from 20 cents to 89 cents a strip off of eBay, Amazon and Walmart. But my insurance is expensive it is over $550 a month - no deductible but copays that top out at $6,500 - plus hassle with GP about treatment - he thinks I am obsessive because I work so hard to control my BG. He thinks I should be satisfied with A1c of 6.5 or below.

I've been able to get my insulin for free by using coupons where you can get either 5 75/25 or 100 Kwikpens per year. The new insurance will not pay for these Kwikpens but only for traditional shots and two types of insulin - 4 shots a day versus 2.


Sent from Runner2009 Burt
 
Your comment will go right over the heads of many people here on the forum who are based in the UK. In the UK all people with diabetes get free prescriptions for their meds. Many Type 2's not on insulin or meds like gliclazide will have to buy their own testing strips though.
 
As Denise writes, in the UK the system is different. In the National Health Service the model is to use as few healthcare professionals as possible to treat as many patients as possible, to keep wages and pensions as low as possible. Hence time is at a premium.

The result is the doctor doesn't want to spend time with the patient and resorts to prescribing drugs, the so called 'take two asprin and go to bed' type approach.

In order to control costs, the government have introduced the concept of profit centres but this has simply resulted in it becoming more difficult to see a doctor and, when you do, he or she simply writes a prescription for the cheapest possible drug and tells you to see how it goes for 6 months.
 
Your right, he only gives me 1 per day, baby asprin of course.
 
Yorksman said:
As Denise writes, in the UK the system is different. In the National Health Service the model is to use as few healthcare professionals as possible to treat as many patients as possible, to keep wages and pensions as low as possible. Hence time is at a premium.

The result is the doctor doesn't want to spend time with the patient and resorts to prescribing drugs, the so called 'take two asprin and go to bed' type approach.

In order to control costs, the government have introduced the concept of profit centres but this has simply resulted in it becoming more difficult to see a doctor and, when you do, he or she simply writes a prescription for the cheapest possible drug and tells you to see how it goes for 6 months.
Click to expand...

I've noticed the differences, affordability is a big issue here in the US.

And thought we talk about prevention of diseases it is little more than lip service.

Insurance for services and insurance for meds is often separate contracts and the copays and deductibles are often not combined even on the same insurance plan.

Our cost for meds is the highest in the world.

We talk about the focus on 'patient outcomes' but mostly it is about insurance / hospital / clinic / pharma / Docs profitability.

I always thought that the UK single payer system was the a much better system.

I've only been a diabetic for about a year and most of what I've learned was from my own research and reaching out to forums such as this.

When I left Hospital, I was shaken, afraid and felt like I was left out for the wolves.

My nutritional counseling was 3/4 of an hour at my bedside. How to give myself shots was as I left with a different device than I was given.

No one has ever told me how to calculate my insulin dosage.

My GP gave me no time and said I needed an A1C of 7 or less and basically stated that I might be a good patient for the first 6-months but expected me to fail after that.

I switched insurance and docs and when my last two A1c were 4.9 they basically implied that I was obsessive and they were not interested in what I was doing, except cancel my script for insulin - I refused .

My feeling one of the reason why often outcomes are not so good is that there is little expectations that we can do it.

And then when we do they really do t like to hear it.

My feeling is if you have little expectations that a child will do well in school then they won't and the same goes for us diabetics.

Also, for me at least there was no explanation about how complex the disease is nor that it symptoms and affects change and a one size fits all is so far from the case.

Thx for listening to my rant. I'm off for a rainy run




Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 
runner2009 said:
My GP gave me no time and said I needed an A1C of 7 or less and basically stated that I might be a good patient for the first 6-months but expected me to fail after that.

I switched insurance and docs and when my last two A1c were 4.9 they basically implied that I was obsessive and they were not interested in what I was doing, except cancel my script for insulin - I refused .

My feeling one of the reason why often outcomes are not so good is that there is little expectations that we can do it.

And then when we do they really do t like to hear it.
Click to expand...


Well I can see that the systems in the USA and the UK are different but the attitudes are exactly the same !

Point for point, I had the same experiences.
 
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