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A DIY diabetes kit

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Re: A DIY diabetes kit

#61

Post by robobro »

hising wrote: post #25

Open question - What is the actual cost of living with Diabetes type 1 in the US with a good health insurance? The reason I am asking is I have a 10-year old son with type 1 and we are thinking of moving to US (from Sweden) and would like to estimate the actual cost of living with diabetes in the US in order to make a real life calculation of what it would actually cost us per month. Any tips would be appreciated - i…

With my mom's health insurance (MODA of Oregon), my insulin is $200/vial, 2 vials a month, and the test strips are $100+, syringes are about $20.

Consider applying for medicare or similar?

Re: A DIY diabetes kit

#62

Post by zaroth »

rahkiin wrote: post #54
zaroth wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really a simple answer to the question. The insurance premiums themselves will depend on your job, the employee cost share (the percentage of the premiums that you pay with before tax dollars). Or if you are buying your own plan through the ACA, the cost will depend primarily on your family income. The unsubsidized cost depends on zip code, sex, age, and whether you smoke tobacco, but assume $300 per mont…

I think it is really interesting how I, in the netherlands, have an insurance of 80 euros per month with 700 euros out-of-pocket (yes, 700, not 7000).

I'll bite :-) In the US, healthcare costs for a family of 4 with constant/heavy utilization can be anywhere from $0 to about $30,000, mostly depending on income. The actual care received is comparable in any case.

Of course any analysis which only looks at personal spending on premiums and out-of-pocket expenses without also looking at tax rate and the percent of those taxes which also went to healthcare costs is, I think, fundamentally flawed. For example, "Healthcare should be free for everyone!" †To be funded by a new 10% income tax.

Finally, without also adjusting for public-sector healthcare R&D costs as well as cost shifting to countries more willing to subsidize private R&D, then... well, what exactly are we even comparing? ("Healthcare here is so cheap, we pay generic prices for all the latest wonder-drugs! So glad we benefit from all this great R&D everyone else is funding!")

In short, your data point tells me nothing about what people in NL are really "spending" on healthcare, as well as to what extent the "lower" costs of healthcare in NL could be a result of freeloading on other nation's R&D.

Re: A DIY diabetes kit

#63

Post by tcdent »

tzs wrote: post #24
jawngee wrote: post #5

My son was just recently diagnosed type 1 about 4 months ago (exactly on his 1st birthday, shitty birthday). Unfortunately, we live in Vietnam where access to even basics like pumps, let alone CGM, is non-existant, or incredibly hard. We had to fly to Singapore to get a pump, and then fly back every three months to get new supplies. CGM is a pipe dream. One thing this article doesn't touch on, which is unfortunate, i…

> Test strips in the US can cost $1-2 per strip; we spend about 20-30 cents per. I have type 2, and don't know much about type 1, but I am assuming that the test strips are the same. If so, you can do better than 20-30 cents in the US. The key is to avoid the big brand name meters, like Contour, FreeStyle, AccuCheck, and such. Get a meter from True or ReliOn. These are available retail online and at major brick and m…

Curious if you've researched the expected accuracy and variance of the cheaper products. 10 points is significant, and it's my understanding that even the brand-name stuff varies by a few points.

Re: A DIY diabetes kit

#64

Post by coredog64 »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #30
Bromskloss wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would an insurance ever cover something that is already known? That at least doesn't sound like an insurance in the usual sense of the word.

In the US, "health insurance" mostly isn't about actual insurance, it's just part of the evolved process of obtaining care with a degree of oversight and (semi-)centralized records. You can pay out-of-pocket, in much the same way that you can represent yourself in court: nobody can deny you the option, but the system isn't really set up to operate that way and something will probably go wrong when you try it.

That's not entirely true. When I was uninsured, I was able to negotiate significant cash discounts with many out-patient providers. They had a very good idea what the overhead of billing an insurance provider was and were willing to lop that off their charge.

Where it gets tricky is with in-patient care. There I would agree that it's more like representing yourself in court.

Re: A DIY diabetes kit

#66

Post by yeah568 »

tcdent wrote: post #63
tzs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Test strips in the US can cost $1-2 per strip; we spend about 20-30 cents per. I have type 2, and don't know much about type 1, but I am assuming that the test strips are the same. If so, you can do better than 20-30 cents in the US. The key is to avoid the big brand name meters, like Contour, FreeStyle, AccuCheck, and such. Get a meter from True or ReliOn. These are available retail online and at major brick and m…

Curious if you've researched the expected accuracy and variance of the cheaper products. 10 points is significant, and it's my understanding that even the brand-name stuff varies by a few points.

It's worse than a few points, Chris Hannemann did a couple tests with the same drop of blood across multiple meters, and the results varied quite wildly across them.

https://medium.com/@chrishannemann/a-craftsman-blames-his-to...

https://medium.com/@chrishannemann/measure-seventy-five-time...

Re: A DIY diabetes kit

#67

Post by refurb »

kennywinker wrote: post #12
jacalata wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems relatively defendable - it is far, far more dangerous than many prescription only drugs (eg: birth control), and most people will not be able to work out how much they need without seeing a doctor first.

Birth control is a bad example, because as far as I can find it's prescription only for sex-negative cultural reasons, not for medical reasons. It is exceedingly easy to overdose on tylenol, and yet it's available without any controls.

Birth control pills are prescription because they can increase the risk of a woman getting a blood clot. In the case of women who smoke, it's a drastic increase.

Sex-negative has nothing to do with it. Plan B is non-prescription.

Re: A DIY diabetes kit

#69

Post by onetwotree »

My girlfriend has type 1 diabetes and uses this. It's been a huge improvement in her life - as others have mentioned, it's really like the best thing since insulin.

One thing that's been really awesome to see is how T1D patients and parents with little or no experience with FOSS have taken this stuff: "You mean you guys just made this amazing thing 100% for free?!?!?!". It's like watching the birth of open source all over again :-)

The T1D hacking movement is huge - for example, my GF and I recently replaced the batteries in her CGM transmitter (you're not supposed to be able to do this, so it involved a dremel and solder and playing the tiny fingers game). The older transmitters last about 6 months, and then you have to order them through a horrible medical supply company that knows you're not their real customer (your insurance company and device manufacturers are) so this is a big deal.

An even bigger deal: the newer Dexcom transmitters turn off after 3 months. Dexcom claims that new features mean they need more juice, but T1D hackers reversing the new protocol discovered that the app they come with turns them off. Fortunately, it seems possible to turn them back on without dremels and the tiny finger game.

A closed loop APS is the next step for us :-)

Re: A DIY diabetes kit

#70

Post by kennywinker »

refurb wrote: post #67
kennywinker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Birth control is a bad example, because as far as I can find it's prescription only for sex-negative cultural reasons, not for medical reasons. It is exceedingly easy to overdose on tylenol, and yet it's available without any controls.

Birth control pills are prescription because they can increase the risk of a woman getting a blood clot. In the case of women who smoke, it's a drastic increase. Sex-negative has nothing to do with it. Plan B is non-prescription.

Until very recently plan B was prescription only, so that's not a strong counter example.

The question is, does something about visiting a doctor to get a prescription for birth control mitigate the risk of a blood clot? Something that there would be no way to replicate with say better women's health education or a nice info-graphic next to the birth control section?

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