I live in Lexington, Kentucky and am fortunate that I have insurance, but the way insulin and diabetic supplies are handled is mind-boggling to me.
I use Humalog and Lantus. My insurance deductible is $6000/year. The cost for my insulin through my insurance is about $670 for a box of Humalog pens and $715 for two 10 ml vials of Lantus. If I actually had to pay that, it would be prohibitive. However, since I have insurance the manufacturers have discount programs that allow me to pay $0 for the Lantus and less than $100 for the Humalog but the cost that goes against my deductible is $1375. Once my deductible is satisfied, I then pay $0 for the rest of the year. Then it starts all over again.
So I pay less than $100 for 2 prescriptions that are "valued" at $1375 and everyone seems happy and thriving. I don't see how this works.
Of course, if I didn't have insurance, the discounts aren't available. Why?
On top of that my test strips were not covered at all by my insurance and my Freestyle Libre isn't either, though my insurance gets me a discount on the Libre, but the cost, unlike for insulin, does not apply to my deductible because it is not in their formulary.. None of these make sense to me, because, what good is taking insulin if you are not testing your blood sugar? Isn't that a kind of roulette game?