Thanks for posting the cite and text. I'll take a copy of it with me when I see my doctor again. I doubt he'll budge though. I was talking to the nurse there and she said that it's not recommended that you test all that often if you're on Lantus and Byetta. She said that the doctor was telling her (and she agreed with him) that testing more than 2 or 3 times a day created unnecessary worry for the patient.
She said that if I took a nutrition course that the local hospital offered for diabetics, I would know what foods to eat and that made testing often unnecessary. By taking Lantus, my basal BG numbers only needed to be checked once a day....before breakfast or before bed. By taking Byetta, I only needed to check once after my biggest meal (usually dinner). I might possibly want to test after breakfast, since I'd have taken Byetta before eating that also. So 2 or 3 times a day was sufficient to obtain the BG numbers I needed.
No matter what I suggested, they said the same thing....I needed to take the hospital course to learn how to eat, then I wouldn't need to test that often.
The way my insurance works, they submit a form to the doctor and he fills in what I need for my testing supplies. I never see the form. It's mailed directly to him. When he first received the form, it had 7 tests a day listed. When he saw that, he changed it to 3 tests a day.
The reason that it originally had 7 tests a day was because I told the receptionist at the doctor's office that I was testing 7 times a day. Apparently, after I called the durable medical goods provider (which is who I have to go through to get my supplies mailed to me, since there isn't any place nearby that my insurance deals with), they called the doctor's office and talked to this receptionist. She called me while the medical goods provider was on another line, and asked me how often I test. That's when I told her seven. She told the medical goods provider seven, and they sent me a box with supplies for seven tests a day for one month.
The medical goods provider then mailed a form to the doctor, and that's when he saw the 7 tests a day and changed it to 3. The medical provider said that since I needed more than 6 strips a day, I needed to keep a log of each test I did and to mail it to them at the end of 30 days to have the insurance pay for them. Since the receptionist told them I was using 7 strips a day, they would cover them for one month, but since the doctor changed them to 3 a day, they would then send me 3 a day after that.
The medical goods provider was at first going to charge me for those extra 4 strips a day. If they tried to do that, they'd have had a war on their hands. I'd have sent them back. They charge a ridiculously high price for the strips. I was buying my own strips for $60 per 100. They charge $200 per 100. What a ripoff.
