We, The Undersigned - #DBlogWeek Day 2

You can find more We, The Undersigned posts on the Tuesday 5/14 Link List.

Recently various petitions have been circulating the Diabetes Online Community, so today let’s pretend to write our own. Tell us who you would write the petition to – a person, an organization, even an object (animate or inanimate) - get creative!! What are you trying to change and what have you experienced that makes you want this change? (Thanks to Briley of inDpendence for this topic suggestion.)

We, the undersigned People with Diabetes (PWDs) and caregivers and loved ones of PWDs (Type 3s) do herby petition our insurance companies for the following:

• Test Strips, the number the doctor says we need, not the number you think we need.  (I test when I wake up, before and after each meal, and before bed.  If I’m unusually high or low, I need to test a few more times.  That is why my doctor prescribes 10 strips a day, which I then need to fight you for.)
• The freedom to chose our own meters.  (As if fighting for strips wasn’t bad enough, why do you get to dictate which meter I use?  Why is it okay to make me pay a higher co-pay for my strips if I prefer a meter that you don’t consider “preferred”.  I’m the one who had to prick my finger 10 times a day and bleed on a little strip.  It’s not fun.  I should at least get to pick the meter that works best for me.  The strips for the current meter I use and love have a co-pay that is twice as much as the meter you think I should use.  Unfair!!)
• Not to mention, the right to use which ever insulin my doctor and I have determined works best for my body.  (Newsflash - insulin is not “one size fits all”.  I’m a unique person with an individual make up.  What works for someone else might not work for me, and vice versa.  Of course, the insulin that works best for me is another that you deem “non-preferred”.  Diabetes is expensive enough, I resent that you are making it even more expensive for me.)
• The understanding that I might know what I need better than you do.  (You don’t wear my diabetes devices every day, so you probably don’t know what is needed.  For example, you cover my CGM sensors - for which I’m grateful.  But you won’t cover the Tegaderm tape I use with them.  Do you understand that without the tape, each sensor wouldn’t stay put for more than a few hours?  Sensors won’t do me any good if they don’t stay on long enough to give me readings.  Duh.)

There is more I could add, but even if we just started here you would reduce my stress quite a bit.  And you know what, health insurance company?  Stress is not healthy!!

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