Possibly you've seen the "Diabetic Strips" signs on the incline of the touring in your state and likewise wondered what actually happens when you call one of the numbers listed… We wrote about organizations dealing in test strips tacky-for-cash in on in our post "Test Strip Charities" last year, but without the extra bonus of having an cloak-and-dagger "secret shopper" to check the avail forbidden. Instantly our talented cartoonist, D-Advocate and correspondent Microphone Lawson offered to make that chance aside following risen on one of these surprising road-side signs. Read on to discover what Mike found down!

Special to the 'Mine away Mister. Mike Lawson

I ma like Woodward. No…I matte like Bernstein. Wait. Which one did Redford wager in All The President's Men? That's the ace I felt like.

I was sitting in a McDonald's parking lot in Scottsdale, Arizona, ready and waiting for a man named Marcus to meet me so I could sell a box seat of 50 test strips. I arranged this meeting by career a phone number that I saw on a road-English sign in Phoenix that said "Ca$h Stipendiary For Diabetic Strips."

IT is not illegal for companies to buy and sell try out strips like this — although the companies are required to register with the FDA and umpteen fail to do so — yet this transaction still felt up a little shady. When I named the numeral, for representative, I wasn't greeted with a company epithet simply just by a woman who known herself as "Stephanie." Stephanie told me that there was no physical building for me to flake out the strips, but rather a courier would be dispatched to ME.

Stephanie as wel told me that the terms paid for strips varied supported the brand and the expiration date. Indeed I could sell this box of One Touch strips that I purchased for $10 on my private insurance to this unnamed company for $20. And this same loge of strips will sell for $40 or more online. But are the quality products?

For someone who is uninsurable OR underinsured, $40 for a box of strips that retails for $50 or Sir Thomas More sounds equivalent a deal out. Merely St. David Winmill, a nurse clinician and Certified Diabetes Educator that practices in Ogden, Utah, says patients need to personify skeptical when they purchase testing supplies online from supply resellers.

"Patients need to question the unity of the products they are purchasing online," Windmill aforesaid. "It's impractical to guarantee that the strips purchased from a third-party were maintained in a certain surroundings."

Test strips that are expired, open to heat, or utilized on a time other than the one they were successful for can produce incorrect results. Disdain the risks of using 2d-hand supplies, the eminent cost of being a florid diabetic explains why this black market has developed.

People with diabetes (PWDs) are receiving test strips for free or extremely discounted using Medicare, Medicaid Oregon close insurance then merchandising them to companies that will resell them to uninsured or underinsured the great unwashe at a price that is still lower than retail price. The seller makes a trifle cash, and the buyer gets a respectable discount, so everybody wins, right?

For instance, take up the case of Jenn Wilder, an Arizona cleaning woman who doesn't have health insurance and was diagnosed with pre-diabetes six months ago. She buys her testing supplies online because of the savings. "After doing a careful cost analysis, I realized that I could still buy supplies cheaper than the cost with health insurance," she aforementioned.

Wilder spends about $75 for 100 strips through an online retailer that she found through a Google search. If she purchased the same strips at a pharmacy, she'd pay about $125. She told me that if she discovered that the supplier had oversubscribed her defective surgery expired strips, she would just feel a new online supplier, because paying fraught-price for strips is not an option.

And it's that cerebration that brings me to where I was, going "undercover" to sell my ain strips…

In the crepuscular, empty McDonald's parking lot I started having bit thoughts. I started thinking that maybe I hadn't thought this finished. Do I postulate an alias? Make out I need a deep coat operating theatre disguise? What if this is a setup? Just now ahead I talked myself into going, a white unmarked Honda Accord pulled up next to me. It was Marcus, the courier.

Marcus, I well-educated, does not work for the accompany that purchases the strips operating theater hangs the signs. "I'm just a courier," he said. The diabetes provide reseller pays a courier company that Marcus works for to pick sprouted supplies. Marcus doesn't know bupkis about diabetes supplies; he's just the middle man.

As I signed a receipt on the trunk of Marcus' car, He pulled down a wad of cash and in the raw off a $20 invoice for me. He examined the box — they only bargain unexpired and plastered boxes of strips and lancets. I asked Marcus if his courier party did a great deal of pickups like this one. "This is most the exclusive thing I break up up," he aforesaid. Wow.

When I disclosed to Marcus that I would be writing an article roughly buying/selling the strips, He said that he had nothing to add. And (no more surprise) I as wel had trouble getting anyone on the inside of this business to talk to me. When I unsuccessful to contact five different online resellers to discuss safety concerns operating room get them to explain their processes, non one of them returned my emails operating theatre calls.

A slow economy and heights unemployment grade has been bad for many Americans, and that is sure enough true for PWDs. Winmill, the Utah CDE, said that he's suspected some of his patients have been using second-hand test strips and he knows some of his patients have cancelled appointments because they cannot afford the copayments. And he's had to delay necessary tests like cholesterin screenings because the patient force out't afford it at the time.

Winmill recognizes that IT is costly for us PWDs to detain healthy, so atomic number 2's non placing any blame. "Most patients want to make the right-hand matter. They neediness to help themselves." He believes that patients buying minute-hand strips are just doing what is in their means to gravel what they need.

But what many a patients assume't know, Winmill says, is that their doctors and nurses rump help them get through tough times. He suggested that before PWDs turn to test bare resellers happening the Internet — or the side of the itinerant — they try communicating with their health care providers.

"Thither are galore resources that we have access to that can help patients receive the equipment and supplies they need from trusty sources."

Patients give the sack apply for prescription savings programs like Together Rx Access operating theatre the national Partnership for Prescription Assistance program, which offer discounts along umteen unlike brand-name and generic prescription products at the pharmacy.

Beyond examination strip savings, patients in involve can also apply for assistance from a handful of companies that make their drugs. These include Lilly Cares for discounts connected Humalog insulin; Novo Nordisk's Cornerstones4care program for Levemir and Novolog insulin; and Sanofi's Patient Connection for Lantus and Apidra. Some separate options for nest egg on diabetes meds can be found Hera.

Note that these preservation programs go require a co-key signature from your healthcare supplier, and the insulin or meds provided is shipped directly to the supplier's office for you to pick astir.

So mayhap you'ray not saving immediately on glucose strips, but we'll take the avail wherever we arse get information technology, right?

While IT was good-hearted of an adventure, I personally plan on speaking to my healthcare team or looking into some of the prescription assistance programs before turning to the seedy human race of trench coats, couriers and McDonald's parking rafts over again.