The Joy of Insurance Paperwork

Let me start this by saying that I know I am very fortunate to have two insurance providers, the one from my work being my primary insurance and the one from my wife’s work as a secondary provider. The downside of having two insurance companies is that all the paperwork now has to be done twice and getting them to play nice with each other is no easy task.

Late last year I was only on my wife’s insurance, at her renewal time the insurance company informed us of changes to their plan that was going to cost us a lot more money for all of my supplies and prescriptions. At the same time my company’s insurance had their annual open enrolment period. After a lot of research I found that I could join my company’s insurance plan and after paying that premium I would still be money ahead at the end of the year. I know that sounds like a pretty easy deal but that is where this adventure really begins.

The first thing that I had to do was fill out all the obligatory paperwork. I then had to contact my doctor and get all new prescriptions to my new insurance company’s mail order prescription provider. After getting these prescriptions from my doctor and checking them I found that he had a couple of them wrong. Another call to the doctor got that straightened out and I sent them off to my new provider. The next step was to contact my wife’s insurance company and inform them that I now have a new primary insurance provider. I then had to contact my former mail order prescription company and inform them that I have a new primary insurance provider.

Shortly after all the notifying is done I receive a letter from my former mail order prescription company telling me it was time to refill my prescriptions. I call them again and tell them of the change in insurances. Shortly after that they send me a form to fill out to let them know that I now have a different insurance company. The tone of the form led me to think that they thought I was just being a bad person for not filling my medications like they know I should. Oh well, fill out the paperwork and off it goes to them.

About this same time I decided that I would like to get a CGMS to supplement all my other diabetic toys. I e-mailed my diabetes nurse and she sent me some paperwork to fill out and give to my doctor. I filled it out and sent it to them. My doctor does not understand why I want to use a CGMS but I will have to get into that in another post. In the mean time my diabetes nurse gets everything taken care of and I order the CGMS after of course some more paperwork. To get the supplies for my CGMS my diabetes nurse sends all of my prescriptions to yet another mail order supply company. Good news on this company, after some more paperwork they will file both of my insurances for me and I end up with no out of pocket on all of my CGMS supplies except the sensors. I’ll probably write a little more about the sensor situation in the same post that I write about my doctor’s feelings on my having a CGMS.

I received all of my medication prescriptions from my new mail order company and then filled out the paperwork to have my secondary insurance reimburse me for what I paid my primary insurance for the prescriptions. I then received a letter from my secondary insurance stating that my primary insurance did not have the right codes on the receipt for them to reimburse me for what I had paid. I fill out more paperwork requesting the correct billing codes from my primary insurance company. I get their response to my request and fill out more paperwork and send it to my secondary insurance company again. I’m still waiting on their response to this last round of paper work.

All of the above paperwork leads me to my current and most frustrating round of paperwork. I have just received a letter from my current insurance company requesting information on all of my diabetic related treatment and supplies. The part that I have the hardest time understanding is, they are already paying for all of this stuff. I would think that since they are the company paying for these items they would already have all of this information. I would like to have about 10 minuets in their computer system so I could print off all of my information that they have on me so I could then hand it to them so they know everything about my diabetes treatment and supplies. But alas, I fill out more paperwork and off it goes to my insurance company.

Can there be anything better than the pure joy of filling out insurance company paperwork?

Eat more so I can exercise?

I have never been good at the exercising part of being diabetic. For the first year after my diagnosis I did really well, I ate right, lost weight and had good control of my blood sugars. Now here I am going on year two with diabetes and admittedly I am not doing as well, or at least that’s the way that I feel. I know that I haven’t been eating as well as I should and the weight loss seems to have hit a plateau for the last few months. I know at this point it looks like I am going to have to start doing some sort of exercise to loose the last of the weight that I need to.

Finding where to put exercise in my schedule is my next dilemma. I have a very erratic schedule, my day typically starts at 5:30 in the morning getting myself ready for work and the kids ready for school and then out the door around 6:00am. I am then usually back home around 6:30 in the evening. I can’t see myself getting up any earlier; I am definitely not a morning person. In the evenings I really like my time to just set and relax so I guess that this will be the best time for me to work in some exercise.

I am not much for the normal exercises, so I think my best bet to getting exercise is working outside. Mowing, hauling dirt to fill those holes in the driveway, putting some more backfill around the house and the shed, fixing fence etc....

This is by no means a promise to anyone that reads this or even to myself that I am going to do this all of the time. I would like to say that I will but I know that it will not happen on a regular basis. But the way that I look at it, if I can at least get out and do some of these things on an irregular basis it will be a lot more than I am doing now.

Exercise is good for loosing weight and lowering your blood sugars. Here is my problem with the last half of that statement, my last A1C test last month was 4.9. So if I exercise to loose weight and it lowers my blood sugars do I need to eat more so I don’t get to low?
Man is diabetes ever fun to figure out!

Sedentary Lifestle

Today started out like any other work day. Go to work, do normal work stuff until my mom called me at about 9am. My 81 year old type 1 mom called and asked if I could go up to the hospital to be with my sister. My sister who is type 2 had back surgery on Monday and they were getting ready to send her to a rehab hospital. My mom had been staying at my brothers’ house which is a lot closer to the hospital than were she and I live. My brother had picked her up from the hospital to take her home to get some more clothes and medicines. My mom wanted someone to be with my sister when they move her because she is on a lot of pain killers and is not thinking clearly at the moment.

I work at a great company that is very understanding, I stick my head in my bosses office and tell him I will be taking off the rest of the day and take off for the hospital. When I got to my sisters room she was setting up in a chair watching TV. We talked for a while and then her lunch came so I went downstairs and grabbed me a bite to eat. After lunch the nurses came in and got her ready to go to the rehab hospital. I gathered up all of her stuff and took off to the rehab hospital.

When I got there they were just taking her up to her room. I took her stuff up to her, told her I would be back up tomorrow with the kids and I got the heck out of there. The reason that I left in such a hurry was that I knew what was about to happen, therapy was going to start immediately.

I suppose that you might need a little information why I wanted to leave before therapy started. My mom was diagnosed type1 at the young age of 79; my sister was diagnosed type 2 a few months after my mom’s diagnosis (about a year after that I was diagnosed type 2). My mom and sister live together and kind of take care of each other. Shortly after their diagnosis’s I noticed that they were both putting on more weight, not a subject that I was or am willing to discuss with them. At the same time they both started living a very sedentary lifestyle. I did ask if the doctor said anything to them about the importance of staying active and getting any exercise that they can, they said that their doctors did tell them that but they just don’t have the strength to do it. I have been around them enough to know that it would not matter what I said or how much information I could show them on the benefits of staying active they had made up their minds that since they have diabetes they just don’t have the strength.

Now here we are a couple of sedentary years later and they both can’t seem to walk more than 20 or 30 yards without taking a break.

I know that while my sister is in the rehabilitation hospital she will not have a choice but to get up and move, that is what this hospital is all about. All I can say is that I hope these are very patient people because I know she will fight them tooth and nail to keep her sedentary lifestyle. I know these next couple of weeks will be pretty tough on her but in a way I’m glad that it is happening, at least now she will be forced to be more active, if she can keep it up when she gets home that can only be a good thing. I know I will do my part to make sure that she stays active.

I love my mom and sister to death but I do get pretty frustrated with what they are blaming diabetes for doing to them. I so want to tell them that it takes two to tango but like a alluded to earlier, listening to reasoning is not their strong point.