- Messages
- 5
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Pump
Browsing through this board I noticed people have mentioned insulin pump expenses and it made me curious about funding options in different countries.
I'm from Canada and it is not covered here by the vast majority of health insurance companies because it's technically elective and not necessary to maintain diabetes. Instead, the government has something called The Assisted Devices Program that you have to apply for and meet certain yearly requirements to get. For example, your A1C's have to be under a certain level and you have to be in contact with your diabetes team a min of 4 times a year. If you meet the requirements, they will give you a cheque every three months to cover a portion of the costs of your supplies.
This all seemed perfectly attainable at first but I eventually found it extremely difficult to maintain the requirements, especially when I was in my early 20's and living away from home at university. My mom would constantly tell me that I had to "play the game" to get this funding and it all got to be so frustrating. My diabetes team was also very unsupportive and treated this process like a business transaction. I eventually let my funding lapse, which got to be very costly. Now that life has calmed down I recently reapplied for funding and am thankfully not finding it as difficult to maintain. However, I have friends that were so fed up with this process and its tight guidelines that they have elected to go off the pump altogether.
Is there a program like this where any of you reside?
I'm from Canada and it is not covered here by the vast majority of health insurance companies because it's technically elective and not necessary to maintain diabetes. Instead, the government has something called The Assisted Devices Program that you have to apply for and meet certain yearly requirements to get. For example, your A1C's have to be under a certain level and you have to be in contact with your diabetes team a min of 4 times a year. If you meet the requirements, they will give you a cheque every three months to cover a portion of the costs of your supplies.
This all seemed perfectly attainable at first but I eventually found it extremely difficult to maintain the requirements, especially when I was in my early 20's and living away from home at university. My mom would constantly tell me that I had to "play the game" to get this funding and it all got to be so frustrating. My diabetes team was also very unsupportive and treated this process like a business transaction. I eventually let my funding lapse, which got to be very costly. Now that life has calmed down I recently reapplied for funding and am thankfully not finding it as difficult to maintain. However, I have friends that were so fed up with this process and its tight guidelines that they have elected to go off the pump altogether.
Is there a program like this where any of you reside?
