Buckle up y'all, this one is long. A cookie for you all who read it.
We constantly talk about the price of insulin, and rightly so, the cost of it in the US is absurd and a disgrace. But something I often fail to see is a discussion on the cost of pump supplies and CGMs.
I use the Medtronic minimed 670g and the guardian sensor so that's what I know, others may be cheaper.
With insurance it costs me 600 dollars for a three month supply of sensors and infusion sets. Infusion sets are mostly plastic and tubing with a small needle and catheter. A box of 100 IV catheters at my work costs 15 dollars. These infusion sets cost 200 dollars for 30. It is not uncommon for me to get a kinked infusion set, rendering them useless
With insurance a box of ten reservoirs, literally a plastic vial with a plunger, is 80 dollars.
Sensors are the most expensive, costing hundreds (at times my insurance didn't cover and a single box was over 1200 dollars when quoted to me). For the price of a cheap phone I get 5 glucose sensors that are programmed to stop working after a week no matter what.
Finally there's the fact that I can't buy straight from Medtronic. I have to go through a company called edgepark (which is frankly a shit company). Edgepark then sends my medical bill out to a THIRD company that slightly increases my insurance costs and then bills me. So am I paying the true costs of my supplies? It's hard to tell. And perhaps there is a better way I'm unsure of currently, regardless this current system is broken.
There are peer reviewed studies that show a CGM and pump therapy lead to better controlled sugars (this is obviously not a catch all, there are those who prefer and do better on mdi) as well as evidence to suggest pumps and CGMs lower the stress on a diabetic individual
Yet when I've mentioned the costs of supplies to people I've heard "that's because you're doing extra". If a medical device is prescribed to you, and improves your condition, then it is not "extra". A kidney transplant is better than dialysis but dialysis can still keep you alive
I wish we had more discussion on the costs of the non-insulin parts of diabetes (this includes the absurd cost of test strips). Because diabetes does not end with insulin.
Thank you for listening. Please let me know if you experience something similar or perhaps this is an outlier situation
Social Plugin