Diabetes Talking

Question:

I received a postal mail message from Cascade Medical yesterday. Cascade Medical, if you don’t recall, manufactures the CheckMate line of meters.  They suffered from severe financial problems last year and were unable to make the promised rebates and trade-in refunds promised to those, like me, who bought their newest meter. They letter says they are now able to manufacture strips and they will be offered at very low prices compared to other brands of strips. Because their interim financing does not allow them to send the rebates and refunds, they are offering several packages of their products as an alternative.  Depending on what they owe, it is possible to exchange for strips and/or diabetes management software. From what they describe as the value for the test strip offer, it looks like they are going to price strips at $20 for a box of 50 strips. I used the meter for a while, but thought it was a bit hard to use. I’m thinking of ordering strips and the software in exchange for my rebate/refund.  I’m curious about the software and if data can be downloaded from the CheckMate meter. I hope they are successful in a recovery and at this attempt to lower the price of strips.  The decrease in strip prices will, hopefully, put pressure on all the companies to lower prices. Comments? — – Bob Waltenspiel | HP Microwave Inst. Division       | phone: (707) 577-3091           | | Santa Rosa, CA 95403              |                                 | |                                   |                                 | |     homepage(hp internal only): http://www.sr.hp.com/~bobw          |

Response:

I hope they are successful in a recovery and at this attempt to lower the price of strips.  The decrease in strip prices will, hopefully, put pressure on all the companies to lower prices. Comments? — – Bob Waltenspiel

I don’t know what insurance carrier you use, but there is already a bit of pressure appearing.  I’m with Sanus, and I use an OTII, provided by Sanus about 18 months ago. This past September, received a letter from Sanus saying they were going to start paying for strips if I’d convert to an AccuChek.  I’m pleased with OTII, Dr. likes the printouts of BG records, and I decided to argue. After letters, phone calls and general hell raising, they decided to pay for OTII strips.  Which means I now pay $7. for 50 strips, rather than $33.+ I learned in the course of this that AccuChek had cut a deal with Sanus by which AccuChek "gave" 500 meters to Sanus as a test run for existing patients as a device for Sanus to find out (1) how expensive it would be for them to cover strips (with co-payment) and whether diabetics would test more regularly if they strips weren’t so expensive.  This was a direct result of the study that showed tight control warded off later problems. Moral: insurance companies may (with pressure) start paying for strips.

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