We Buy Diabetic Test Strips Philadelphia

Doctors often counsel diabetic patients to test several times a day, but diabetes educator Nadine Uplinger says many people don't like to test and the incentive of cash endangers their health, "We want people to test, but they don't have a lot of resources and if they don't want to bother testing and they can get money for it, I'm sure they're doing it."

we buy diabetic test strips philadelphia

Uplinger was outraged when the signs appeared outside Einstein's clinic in North Philadelphia. The practice is legal, unless the strips are purchased through Medicare and Medicaid, but Uplinger finds it unethical, "They're targeting North Philly, which is underserved to begin with, and it was upsetting to myself and my colleagues to see that they're targeting this population when we're trying so desperately to get people to test their blood sugar so that they can better self-manage their disease."

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For someone who is uninsured or underinsured, $40 for a box of strips that retails for $50 or more sounds like a deal. But David Winmill, a nurse practitioner and Certified Diabetes Educator that practices in Ogden, Utah, says patients need to be skeptical when they purchase testing supplies online from supply resellers.

Test strips that are expired, exposed to heat, or used on a meter other than the one they were made for can produce inaccurate results. Despite the risks of using second-hand supplies, the soaring cost of being a healthy diabetic explains why this black market has developed.

People with diabetes (PWDs) are receiving test strips for free or highly discounted using Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance and then selling them to companies that will resell them to uninsured or underinsured people at a price that is still lower than retail price. The seller makes a little cash, and the buyer gets a nice discount, so everybody wins, right?

Instead, two young men in hats, with bandannas over their faces, entered the CVS at Ina and Thornydale roads in Marana at 3:45 a.m. Aug. 8, jumped the pharmacy counter and grabbed ... boxes of diabetic test strips.

The resale of test strips has been going on for many years, Dr. Merri Pendergrass, director of the Adult Diabetes Program at Banner-University Medical Center, told me. But as the number of people with diabetes has exploded over the last decade or so, the market for test strips has also grown.

The lawyer for a patient who died at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest in January after being improperly administeredinsulin says faulty blood sugar testing strips and communication breakdowns cost his client her life.

Pharmacists certainly know the high cost of glucose test strips.A January 2010 Diabetes Forecast article published by the AmericanDiabetes Association noted that the yearly cost of test strips toan individual typically range from $104 to $1,820, depending uponthe frequency of testing. Some states exempt test strips from salestax when they are purchased by individuals, but these states pay ahigh price. If all the states with a sales tax imposed their tax ontest strips sold to individuals and medical providers, theresulting sales-and-use tax revenue would total approximately aquarter of a billion dollars per year.

SSTP states such as Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky,Minnesota, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, and Wisconsin, maintainspecific exemptions for test strips. Kansas, Nebraska, NorthCarolina, South Dakota, Utah, and West Virginia exempt the teststrips if they are purchased with a prescription.

Michigan and Vermont classify test strips as a component ofblood glucose meters, which constitute exempt durable medicalequipment in those states. Rhode Island exempts test strips"as they are considered used in the diagnosis of adisease" under the Streamlined definition of a drug.

Other SSTP states tax test strips. Oklahoma imposes tax unlessreimbursed under a Medicaid or Medicare program, while Tennessee,Nevada, and Wyoming tax test strips sold to individuals on thebasis that such items do not qualify as exempt durable medicalequipment.

Nevertheless, because SSTP states exempt prescription drugspurchased by individuals, an argument exists in SSTP states taxingtest strips that such test strips constitute exempt drugs whenpurchased by an individual holding a prescription.

Test strips typically consist of a plastic test strip with asmall spot impregnated with glucose oxidase, or some othersubstance, which undergoes a chemical reaction when mixed withglucose in a blood sample. As defined by the SSTP, a"drug" generally includes "a compound, substance orpreparation, and any component of a compound, substance orpreparation, other than 'food and food ingredients,''dietary supplements,' or 'alcoholic beverages;'...[i]ntended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment,or prevention of disease." According to this definition, atest strip should constitute a drug because it (1) contains "acompound, substance or preparation, other than food and foodingredients, dietary supplements or alcoholic beverages," and(2) with regard to diabetics, it is obviously "intended foruse in the diagnosis . . . treatment, or prevention ofdisease."

Parties seeking to change a state's taxation of test stripsmay proceed legislatively or judicially. However, successfullylobbying to enact legislation exempting test strips is likely to bedifficult, due to the large negative fiscal impact on a state'sbudget. To proceed judicially, a retailer must either challenge asales tax assessment on test strip sales or request a refund ofsales tax previously collected and remitted on such sales.

As discussed, litigants in states adopting the SSTP's"drug" definition have a solid argument that test stripsconstitute drugs exempt from sales-and-use taxation when providedpursuant to a prescription. However, a successful judicialchallenge will typically produce no economic advantage to aretailer, unless they challenge a significant sales tax auditassessment on test strip sales, nor would any real competitiveadvantage materialize, since all retailers would benefit from afavorable ruling.

For the least pain and the most accurate results, you need the right blood sugar testing supplies: lancets, an accurate glucose meter, and manufacturer-recommended test strips. Skimping may not offer you the payoff you're hoping for; lancets start out very sharp but quickly get dull and will hurt if you try to reuse them, says Amori. Also, using expired or poorly stored test strips can result in inaccurate readings.

If you test on a schedule without really knowing what those results are telling you, you could just be wasting test strips. You might have been given the recommendation to test once in the morning, before and after eating, and then before bed. These actually are good times to test, says Uelmen, as long as you're learning from the results and you understand why you're doing it. For instance, results taken before bed and in the morning are related, but you need to know why and how, so that you can make changes if necessary.

If you do the test at home, follow the instructions that are in your test kit. Your kit will include a package of test strips. You will either hold a test strip in your urine stream or dip it into a cup of urine that you collect with the clean-catch method. It's important to follow the test instructions exactly. Talk with your provider if you have any questions about how you should test for ketones in urine.

Early and rapid identification of hypo- and hyperglycemia as well as ketosis is essential for the practicing veterinarian as these conditions can be life threatening and require emergent treatment. Point-of-care testing for both glucose and ketone is available for clinical use and it is important for the veterinarian to understand the limitations and potential sources of error with these tests. This article discusses the devices used to monitor blood glucose including portable blood glucose meters, point-of-care blood gas analyzers and continuous glucose monitoring systems. Ketone monitoring options discussed include the nitroprusside reagent test strips and the 3-β-hydroxybutyrate ketone meter.

(Updated 2022) Diabetes test strips can cost a lot. We heard prices ranging from 15 cents a strip, to $9 for a box of 50 strips (18 cents each) up to $1.50 per strip. A little more than 60 cents a strip is not uncommon. The strips are used by diabetics to test their blood glucose. While sometimes strips are fully covered by insurance, quite often they are not, as we learned in our #PriceCheck project, crowdsourcing health care prices in California.

People with diabetes wanted us to know that the high cost of diabetes test strips quite often meant they were not able to consistently monitor their blood glucose. That was true both for uninsured people and insured people, who said their insurance policies often did not cover strips, or covered fewer than the doctor prescribed, or covered them with a hefty copay.

Why is the cost of diabetes test strips so high? The question of why is beyond the scope of our reporting, though more than one person has asked why this should be true. If you know, please let us know at info (at) clearhealthcosts (dot) com. 041b061a72