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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

One key take away, Wal Mart sells a lower priced version along with supplied for testing. Well that is all and fine, they do list some reasons it isn't ideal but they leave out the big one. Most people under insurance or government provided health insurance are not permitted to use it.

Throw in over regulation besides limiting which types are available also can interfere with refills of both insulin and testing materials and even require periodic confirmation by a medical professional you are still diabetic.

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When you say they aren't permitted to use it, do you mean it disqualifies them from insurance for other diabetes care or do you mean that the insulin isn't covered by the insurance?

They sell a $25/vial of Regular insulin; its an older style, and can be fairly dangerous to use, as it has quite the different action as the newer 'fast-acting' insulins.

With that said, if tight on money, its certainly better to use it, and monitor it closely, than not be able to afford the $225+/vial novolog or humalog.

It’s not “fairly dangerous to use”. Unlike aspart, Regular is less potent and has a slower and longer activity profile. If you have poor food absorption after a meal, take the wrong dose, or have any other event that would change your insulin requirements, you will find yourself in much sooner trouble with less time to react from aspart versions.

Monitoring is expensive. The strips can be 1-2 euros per one.

Walmart sells their own brand for about $0.20 each, the "name brand" ones are about $0.60-80 here. I have a diabetic friend whose insurance will only pay for 2 strips per day and he buys the remainder from walmart (and has 2 meters because the insurance-provided one is a different model that doesn't work with the walmart test strips).

Not sure where you are in Europe, but they're £0.15 - £0.30 each in the UK. TBH, I still think that's too expensive, but it's nowhere near 1-2 Euros

They are generally $0.15-$0.25 without insurance, and only rarely over $0.6, in the U.S. where this took place.

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