My thoughts on United Health Care and Medtronic's (Minimed)
May 03, 2016
I’ll start out that I only despise one health insurance company and their business practices more and that is Cigna – they sold my medical information to the Korean insulin pump company back in 2004, so thereabouts.
I had UHC coverage for two years, if you want to call it that. They did cover my Medtronic's insulin pump, but not the CGMS. Both Blue Cross Blue Shield and Aetna have/are covering it.
The biggest reason for my disgust with UHC, is my husband’s case. Baylor Institute for Rehab. has been battling them for months for coverage of his recovery from his head injury. They pre-certified the care, got him back on his feet and back to work and UHC is refusing to cover the last week. Oh, and he recovered over 4 weeks sooner than anticipated. Really? If they were trying to pull anything, they would have kept him for the full anticipated treatment.
I feel badly for you if you are stuck with UHC. I'm praying that TRS never goes to them, and will protest loudly if they do.
I think the Minimed and their CGMS system is great. I’m using the latest, and it is a vast improvement over their earlier systems. So there really isn’t a reason to fight over that. I will admit that I haven’t used a Dexcom in years, but I love that fact that I only have to keep up with one box. My doctor gave me two choices, Medtronic's or Omnipod and there are a lot of reasons for me not to use Omnipod.
However, I know that each pump and each diabetic is different, and I think it is also extremely unfair of any insurance company to change coverage mid-year. It always never good for me – since I’m a teacher, my insurance ran September to August, so when they switched on January 1, we were stuck for the rest of the year with their decisions.
I also know that my husband has gotten great service and is happy with the hearing aid and that UHC does have similar agreements for hearing aids. Probably other medical devices.
That said, I blame UHC but I am happy that if you are stuck with them, Minimed is a good choice. Yeah, the TSlim is sexier. BTW, my pump warranty is up in the fall, and I'll be talking to my endo in July with what we go with, but I am leaning towards Minimed/Enlite/Connect. Which reminds me, I need to charge that little gadget.