I’m still angry that the UHC/Medtronic issue hasn’t been resolved. There is/was a ton of discussion about how this is not a decision that takes patient needs and preferences into account but instead seems to cater to what’s best for business needs. “Resolved” would be a reversal of this decision and reinstating the patient/doctor team’s right to decide which therapy is best. I am very curious to see what the financial disclosure looked like for this partnership. I’m unnerved that the slippery slope is being greased by apathy. Where’s our raised voice?
Sometimes I feel like I don’t have enough skin in this particular game because I don’t have United Healthcare as my insurer and I also have a business relationship with Tandem, but at the same time, I have a full pancreas in the game because I have diabetes. I don’t want insurance companies telling me what’s best for my diabetes; I want that decision made between me and my doctor.
What to do? I’m unsure. I know I can share my story about personal diabetes preferences directly influencing health outcomes (hey, like using an insulin pump that fits my current needs in order to achieve an excellent A1C and so-far healthy pregnancy?) I know I can talk about how access matters, because without it, my life gets ugly fast (she says with the security of three months worth of insulin tucked safely into the butter compartment of her fridge). But I feel like my frustrations are in a holding pattern of waiting for someone else to do something or suggest something, watching as time slips by and people become more meh about decisions about our health being made by people who don’t live intimately with diabetes.
I deserve the right to choose. Whether we’re talking about the insulin I take or the pump I use or the meter I rely on, these choices play directly into my health and well-being both physically and emotionally. I didn’t chose diabetes but I deserve the right to chose how I manage this disease.
I’m still angry about this. Frustrated. Confused about what to do next. And swimming in a sea of hormones that makes me unable to keep my mouth shut and my blog quiet. What comes next, unfortunately, still remains a mystery to me.
I would guess, as someone who helps companies with their disclosures for a living, that there will be limited to no specific financial disclosures about this arrangement, because both companies are so massive that this isn’t “material” (significant) to either of their businesses. But it certainly is for individual patients. We all have skin in this game. Today it may be someone else’s insulin pump, but next week it could be your insurance company telling you you don’t need ___________ (fill in the blank) to manage your diabetes. So it’s a positive when anyone with a voice speaks up.
Hi! I’m pretty unnerved by this, too. I recently switched off a medtronic pump+cgm combo into tandem’s and it is REMARKABLY better. There were a couple of times where the medtronic cgm was so inaccurate that if I had not double checked cause I felt wonky I would have bolused myself into a hospital stay. I will be enrolling w/ United at the end of the summer and really wonder how this will affect my pump care. I know UCH is a big dog, but I wonder why pump patients can’t have an option to get the $$ they would give to Medtronic and give it to another provider, knowing full well those patients will have to pay more, probably much more out of pocket to make that choice. To be sure, it would still be really unfair, but there are a lot of those situations where Type 1 (&2!) is concerned. I was just thinking over the 15+ years how many times i’ve switched insulin brands, docs, pumps, meters and JOBS to accommodate health insurance companies… i have yet to have one of them go out on a limb for me. This is bollocks!
This is so sad and so very wrong. Unfortunately it is happening in so many arenas in our daily lives. The UHC/Medtronic collusion just simply SUCKS. I’ve been wearing pumps for over 25 years and using CGM for over 7 years. I’ve been “courted” by Medtronic folks to use their pumps and virtually every contact with them has been one of them knowing better than me what I need. They have all approached me like a sleazy used-car salesman (pls, no disrespect to the honest/hard-work car sales folks).
Anyway … bottom line: Follow the money. That is what is driving the whole thing. That is why the RX companies all of a sudden make Apidra “non-preferred” in favor of the other insulins. It is about the contracts they sign and ultimately the “money”.
Follow the money … it is not about us in the least. We’re just pawns in the whole blame thing.
Nolan K.
Plano, TX
I am going thru the process of switching to a Tandem. I’m hoping I like it better than the Animas. I questioned UHC about this switch and was told if it is approved before July 1 UHC will allow supplies until Tandems warranty is up.
Kerri,
I have silently followed your blog for years and have privately cheered, laughed and cried while reading your posts. As a fellow type I, it angers me beyond description over the “choices” that the insurance companies give us. I am using an insulin pump (in my case I *am* using a Medtronic pump but that’s beside the point for this post/discussion), it is out of warranty, and my insurance company won’t provide a new one since my pump is “still working.” So I wake up every day wondering if today will be the day my pump breaks and I am forced into using Lantus (or another long acting insulin) until my insurance company, Blue Cross, Blue Shield BluePlus of Minnesota, agrees to pay for a new, working and under warranty pump. Thanks for your advocacy and all you share! Emma in Minnesota
As an Endo, I am so upset about this that I would swear to never prescribe another Medtronic pump again, but then I would be sinking to their level. Making decisions that are about me, and not about the patient. And what their needs are…
Choice should matter. But it does not. Medtronic threw its weight around. If you can’t make a better pump and CGM, better to crush the competition instead.
And the sad thing is- we can’t change it. Patient’s needs apparently don’t matter to UHC. And Medtronic only wants to force more sales. Buy the doctors, buy the CDE’s, then buy the insurance companies. What could be better for sales.
Hey- UHC knows what’s best for their patients….
after all, Medtronic told them.
Well, Medtronic. You sure are not MiniMed any more….
Thanks for exposing this issue once again. I wish there was a clear way forward.
I referred your blog to the TUDiabetes blog page for the week of June 6, 2016.
I too am really frustrated and angered by this decision. I have signed several online petitions, shared on blogs and FB groups, but can’t remember where they are anymore.
Perhaps you shared one here already Kerri, but if not, you reach a lot of people and that’s one way for our voices to be heard. Even if it seems like we have no power, we can at least have a voice!
Thanks.
Nothing will change until we all start to get really mad! It’s who you are voting for that really matters! The past five or so years have literally increased my out-of-pocket by a 200% or more!! All while my health insurance monthly payment has gone up over 40%. If you want change…things have to change! Do you hear us Capital Hill????
We are loosing all of our choices and paying for it by loosing our homes to bankruptcy and going into debt to afford the what we need to survive!
How two huge companies can create a monopoly is unconstitutional in every way….but those in office to protect it’s citizens are looking the other way!
And I include the JDRF and ADA that we (I repeat….we…) raise money to help support!!!!!!!!! WE SHOULD BE FURIOUS WITH THEM!!! Where are they?????? Why aren’t they doing something about this???
From what I have read, JDRF gives Medtronic boatloads of funding! If they threatened to stop, change would happen!!
I am so frustrated about this. I’m sorry to vent here…but I “get” what you are talking about. Maybe if we stop fundraising for JDRF and ADA, they would actually start sticking up for the very people that are funding them??? Or is Medtronic/UHC holding their strings too????
This is frustrating! UHC is buying up more campanies and restricting what we can and can not use for supplies. Unfortunately all insurance companiesa are doing this to one degree or another. My insurance just informed me that if I “want” or “feel” I need insulin I must use only Novalog. They will pay nothing for any other insulin. Just because i am a type 2 on a pump does not mean that I am taking insulin because I “want” to. I do it because diet and exercise no longer work on their own and I have really bad reactions to the pills. I was on a CGM but because I went a year without being hospitalized for my diabetes they quit covering it. They did the same for a Type 1 co-worker of mine. Hello, no hospitalization means it’s working.
I work with insurance all day every day and it gets vefry infuriating! The sad thing is the reps we talk to on the phone have the same issues we do and get treated the same way.
There needs to be more choice. We and our doctors know what we need and insurance companies should not be able to tell the doctors and us what to do. The doctors are just as frustrated as we are. I hear their rants daily.
The path that we are on in this country is leading us to fewer and fewer choices for our medical care.