One of my favorite signs, a signal of how bad the economy is:
Of course, where do you even have these test strips to sell?
- Your doctor over-proscribed
- They were originally paid for with insurance (Medicare usually, but also Medicaid, VA, private, etc.)
- You have Type II and can "sense" what your glucose level is by how well you feel, so you don't need that much testing, so you wanna take a gamble and sell of what you have except enough for a couple weeks should you have to go back to testing regularly
It's pretty clear from the proliferation of this sign that the price for diabetes test strips far outstrips the cost to produce them, plus the patients are over-ordering test strips at such a rate that they are bulk trading them in a secondary market.
Who buys the test scripts from the secondary market? We'd like to know that, too.
I wonder how long this can go on before insurers crack down on it.