Volatility in my Blood

For less than a month, I have been testing my blood glucose levels.  As an experiment to understand, in a small way, the intrusion of mandatory activities that a Type 1 Diabetic must perform, I decided to buy a glucose monitor (Accu Chek Aviva Plus) and the necessary strips, lancets, and control solution.  

Today's rude awakening of the cost of test strips occurred when I ran out this morning and drove immediately to Walgreens to buy another set of 50. I was not using any insurance card for this purchase.

The pharmacist rang up the ticket - $109.99.   I nearly fell over (my blood sugar must have dropped suddenly)  since I had spent only  $22.95 for my first set of 50 test strips from Amazon.com.  And I had another 50 test strips on order for $15.00    How could there be a variation of over 7 times the cost?

That led me to an internet search to understand Why Test Strips Cost so Much -  $2.20 a strip.  Should I be upset with "Big Pharma", insurance subsidies, or the drug retailers?   The marginal manufacturing cost is less than $0.15.  But the technology needed (R&D) and the quality necessary (and different by vendor) is evident in testing the various Pharmaceutical companies.  In fact, this research raised my awareness that not all strips read accurately, there is significant potential user misuse (wrong strips, expired strips, etc.) and recalibrating and checking your monitor and batch of strips is a necessary part of the process.  Even the need for  a backup monitor is a good idea.

Now that Jenna has a CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitor) from DexCom, we have found several times where it's accuracy does not match her stick glucose monitor.  As a Statistician this has heightened my awareness of the whole subject of false positive readings and variations.   When your monitor reads 100 -  that really means 80 - 120.  The FDA requires more precision at the lower level but: " For results below 75 mg/dl: 95% of test results must be within plus or minus 15 points of the actual blood glucose level. So a reading of 70 means 55 to 85."

So - there is much to learn in this world of Type 1 Diabetes - physical, emotional, and ----  financial.
I guess volatility occurs in all the areas - glucose readings, confusion about data, and cash register/pocket book impact.


PS -  Why Test Strips Cost so Much - Part 2