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Fire sale! Get your diabetics here!

Fire sale! Get your diabetics here!

Diabetic fire sale! Millions of leads for sale.
100,000 in house produced diabetic leads for sale.
1st position diabetic data available. Call for details...it will go fast!

This, dear readers, is what awaited when I clicked onto my weekly LinkedIn group digest for durable medical equipment.

I realize that the practice of buying and selling leads, within certain parameters, is legal, but it all seems so...tawdry. Is this what I have to look forward to when I reach Medicare age? People buying and selling me like a commodity?
Which, I guess, technically I am. Still, is it hard to understand why CMS and other payers are often tempted to treat diabetes supplies like a commodity when the leads are flying faster than you can say, "here's my credit card number"?

Don't even get me started on the horror stories I hear from providers about unwanted auto shipments of supplies which wastes millions of health care dollars; identity theft, which wastes millions more; and a host of other potential pitfalls that can befall us when something is commodified like this.

Can we expect more of this, as the diabetes population explodes? Who's doing the buying, anyhow? And finally, is this the best LinkedIn has to offer?

Theresa Flaherty
Type 1, 12.5 years

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