Catherine Price was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. She has written for publications including The Best American Science Catherine Price is a professional journalist who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes when she was 22 years old. Her work has been featured in publications including The Best American Science Writing, The New York Times, Popular Science, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post Magazine, Salon, Slate, Men’s Journal, Health Magazine, The Oprah Magazine, and Outside, among others. A graduate of Yale and UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism
Good news on the blood glucose meter accuracy front: the Diabetes Technology Society (DTS) is beginning work on a surveillance program to ensure that blood glucose meters and strips that have been cleared for sale in the United States continue to meet those accuracy standards even after they’re on the market.
You can’t hire a babysitter for your diabetes and have a romantic dinner out. You can’t take a vacation to a tropical island and leave diabetes at home (and if you’re anything like me, diabetes and tropical drinks are a recipe for disaster to begin with).
The New York Times is one of the most respected and trusted papers in the country. It has the ability to affect policy and guide public conversation – and, in the case of healthcare issues, to influence both treatment decisions by doctors, and coverage decisions by private and public insurers. As a result, the Times has a moral responsibility to get every detail right. And if it doesn’t get things right, it needs to correct its mistakes.
Like many other people with diabetes, I had a complicated reaction to the recent story in the New York Times, “Even Small Medical Advances Can Mean Big Jumps in Bills,” by Elisabeth Rosenthal about the high costs of diabetes care in the United States. At first, I was excited: Type 1 diabetes above the fold?
We in the diabetes community need to speak out to argue that a. insulin pumps should be removed from competitive bidding and b. that if they remain in the competitive bidding program, CMS must use a different process to determine reimbursement rates, so that cost-saving does not stifle innovation.
The idea that today people with diabetes can eat everything is supposed to be a liberating philosophy – and certainly, compared to the restricted diets of the past, it is. I’m grateful for faster acting insulins, blood glucose meters and continuous glucose monitoring systems.
It’s difficult to make the FDA’s new guidance on blood glucose test strips sound sexy, but I’m going to try. Imagine this situation: you’re sitting in front of a fire with your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse/lover/partner, relaxing on some soft cushions or maybe a bearskin rug. The lights are low. Candles twinkle. Wine glasses are...
CMS recently rolled out competitive bidding for glucose test strips, a highly controversial process which set the reimbursement amounts that Medicare is willing to pay for glucose test strips. These new prices went into effect on July 1, 2013. You can read Medicare’s summary of the changes here; as the New York Times reported (in a poorly researched article that does not acknowledge any potential quality or safety issues), whereas Medicare used to pay $77.90 for 100 test strips, it now will pay $22.47 – a 72% reduction.
Perhaps you are one of the millions of Americans currently wondering what is going to happen on October 1st, the day when the Health Insurance Marketplace of the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) opens for business. This is a particularly important question for people with diabetes because at the moment, the fact that we have a pre-existing condition leaves us with very few – if any -- options for getting health insurance without an obliging employer or spouse (or other access to a group plan).
Yesterday I had the chance to visit the Philadelphia headquarters of Echo Therapeutics, a small company working to develop a new non-invasive -- that is, totally needle-free -- continuous glucose monitoring system called the Symphony CGM.
