Epinephrine and Insurance
All over this site (and other sources of information about food allergies) you'll see repeated ad nauseum, "And remember, when you're doing XYZ, make sure you have your EpiPen close at hand." Your allergist will likely tell you the same thing, especially if you have an allergy that has any possibility of being life-threatening (even if you've never experienced an anaphylactic episode).
Which is all well and good if you a.) have prescription insurance that covers epinephrine, or b.) have a solid cash flow and can pay for your medications out of pocket. Depending on your dosage and where you fill your prescription, your EpiPen or TwinJect is likely to run you about eighty-five to one hundred dollars or more.
The ACAAI offers a checklist for consumers in a position to choose a health benefits plan (for example, at a job that offers several different health plans for a higher or lower employee contribution, or for a self-employed worker trying to pick an individual health plan), and its recommendations -- to check which plans offer reimbursement for visits to specialists, potentially expensive tests and treatments, and coverage for the medications you're likely to need as an allergy patient.
Not everyone, though, gets to choose their insurance. Some jobs offer one plan, and not all plans cover all allergy treatments. And as of early 2008, the Census Bureau estimated that forty-seven million Americans were without health insurance.
Unfortunately, many otherwise useful strategies for saving money on prescription drugs aren't of much help in paying for EpiPens (although Tricia's list may help if you're dealing with seasonal allergies and/or asthma on top of food allergies). Readers have reported that large prescription drug discount programs like the Partnership for Prescription Assistance don't cover autoinjectors, and there are currently no generic autoinjectors on the market. Making a contribution of pretax dollars to a medical flexible spending account to cover your epinephrine is another way to ease the financial burden slightly (these accounts work by placing your pretaxed income in a special account that can only be used for medical expenses).
Your state may offer a program that helps cover part or all of the cost of your medication, however, and don't overlook your allergist as a useful resource. The companies that manufacture TwinJect and EpiPen also offer prescription assistance programs. Have you found an individual health plan that covers these resources, or do you have a story of your own about allergy medication and health insurance? If so, feel free to share it in the comments or the Food Allergy Forum.
Comments
This may not work for others, depending on the insurance plan, but just before the school year started, I called in to my allergist’s office requesting refills for my son’s Epi Jr’s, since they all expired in November. The person I spoke to said, no problem, a pair for school and a pair for home, I’ll call it in. When I went to pick them up, I was happily surprised to find out that I only had to pay one copay instead of two. (I’m still not thrilled with how high the copay is, but that’s another story.)
Refilling them all at the same time saved me a bundle.
Has anyone tried NAET- also known as allergy elimination technique? I had great success with an NAET practitioner, Dr. Pitman, in the Blue Ash area. My eighteen month old had such a severe reaction to soy that he would react if he came in contact with the substance. Although I still (by habit) avoid soy, he has had it on several occasions and has had no reaction.
Considering soy is in so many foods, I felt I could not keep my son safe. For eight months, I visited many traditional allergists and searched the Internet for hope. I now want to get the word out about NAET.
If you or your child are suffering from food allergies, please look into NAET or visit Dr. Pitman’s website at http://www.familytreecc.com