What a deal!!!
Insurance companies gouge on CPAP machines and consumables, use wireless modems to spy on your usage
Yes, I’m amazed I got through. You’d think their server would be overloaded offering such great deals!
Mine, too. But it pesters me to turn the modem back on. One slip up and all the data will be sent to ResMed unless I were to use the clinical menu to erase user data on a daily basis to keep the it from accumulating. You can’t just pull the modem card (without maker skills, anyway), nor can you buy a ResMed machine without one, though some people have found out by accident if you buy a ResMed machine indented for a different country, the cellular modem won’t work.
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Had to comment on the user name lol
Season 1 EP 1 Galaxy Being
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your insurer can cut you off and stop paying anything toward your CPAP therapy.
… So let me get this straight. The insurer is charging the insured too much by requiring that the insured rent the machine and pay above-retail prices for the consumables. But it is somehow bad news if the insurer cuts the insured off and stops paying anything toward the CPAP therapy? Wouldn’t that be a net benefit to the insured in this instance?
This sounds like a food-was-terrible-and-the-portions-were-too-small complaint.
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My machine is rent-to-own. So, yeah insurance wants to make sure I’m using it for the first few months if they’re going to subsidize these payments until I own it.
I was told about the modem. I asked to read the privacy policy that describes what’s collected and who it’s shared with. Nope. No policy available. I was told I could remove the modem and just bring my data card into my follow-up appointments. It’s probably not an issue since there’s no reliable cell coverage from any carrier at my house. So the doctor gets the data from the data card and lets insurance know that I’m compliant with my treatment plan.
Yes, I could download Sleepyhead to study my data, but I have a little more faith that my doctor knows how to interpret it better than I and my internet searches could do. And if I really wanted the data, I could buy a smartphone and install a free app that talks Bluetooth to my machine to get and display the same data.
Yeah, no. Neither ResMed nor Phillips show you, the patient, the same data Sleepyhead or the companies’ own clinical software does. You won’t see your events, or the flow - time graph, or your flow restriction graph, or your APAP pressure graph in any company’s consumer app, and those graphs are key to understanding and scoring the events. The machines often score events wrong - they can’t tell if you are awake or asleep - so taking a look at the time flow graph can tell you whether central apneas were real, or if you were awake or transitioning, and all sorts of other information. You may not need to see this data, but if you do want to see it, the company apps for consumers won’t show it to you.
Your doctor (or in many cases, a respiratory therapist) may not even bother to look at the graphs. The high res data is only available direct off the card. Low res data and compliance info is what is sent over the ResMed cellular modems. (Not sure what Phillips sends, datawise.) Many docs or RTs just look at the AHI and the number of hours used and say “Looks fine”, regardless of whether you are sleeping well.
ResMed’s myView app and website, for instance is really just a compliance app, literally more concerned with your hours of use, number of times you started and stopped the machine, and mask leak rate than it is with the actual success of your treatment, such as your actual number of apneas and hypopneas. myView gives you a supposed success score of 1-100, of which your apneas per hour only get a max of 5 points. And the app doesn’t tell you anything about your events, not whether they were centrals or obstructive, nor the total time in apnea, nor your 95% pressure, your snore rate - nothing. Just the AHI. That’s it.
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I learned, so can you.
Last year I was prescribed a CPAP following a one night sleep study that showed mild apnea (if mild is the right word. Inconclusive might be better.)
I DESPISED that torture device. Mine had a partial face mask that covered mouth and nose. I couldn’t (or wouldnt?) Adapt to the feeling of a silcone assailant holding its hand ovr my face, while I was tethered to a whirring box.
People suggested I ask to try the under-nose mask version but I hated the fucking thing SO much I just stopped using it, irresponsibly did not return it or take calls from the distributor Spies whom I decided were conspirators w/sleep doc to screw me AND my insurer, then ignored collections.
I hated this fucking situation so damn much I decided to stop drinking, since all the literature, the doc, etc said drinking and being overweight can be culprits of sleep probs. Couldn’t hurt, right.
To my profound dismay, found I could not stop. Many other non-sleep related problems ensued.
So i joined AA.
MY WHOLE LIFE HAS CHANGED. I’ve stopped drinking. Im in process of straightening out debts and other messes.
What I thought were poor sleep/apnea symptoms I believe were results of nightly drinking from alcoholism. Self diagnosing, yeah, but all I know is I feel better and I’m not stuck to that horrorpus tentacle at night.
I’m planning to ask for another sleep study after i meet weight loss goal (another sobriety blessing). For the first time in over a decade, I’m sleeping more than 2 or 3 hours continuously and don’t wake up with a Sahara desert-dry mouth and headache, so God willing, they’ll say I don’t need that summabitch torture device.
If I do, I’ll BUY it. I refuse to let a corporation profit from my fucking SLEEP like a lost Clockwork Orange chapter.
Glock that, Desloge Home Oxygen.
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Ah the good ole days when a doctor could write “you need medical equipment” on a small script pad, the social worker reviewed your coverage, and called the DME supplier wouold promptly deliver it. The whole CPAP quagmire changed due to fraud or physicians who said “you really need to lose weight” which then mandated a sleep study. next thing you know wheelchairs & walkers needed a physical therapist to see if you really couldn’t walk. dialysis, glucose monitors, electric hopspital beds, and of course home oxygen all came under heavy scrutiny during the Bushboy years. By the time Obama started the national health debate it was too late. Vote
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For the amount I paid for my cpac machine, I could have bought it out right on Amazon. Instead the insurance companies are paying a whole lot in this rent to own model. Every month, I would get a phone call saying what percentage use was for the month which was above 90%. I was good until the last month when I needed dental surgery that strictly forbade pressure on my face and I had the full face mask. After talking to my insurer, it was easier to give me the machine than restart the whole process and have the doctors and medical rental company again.
It knows when you are sleeping. It knows when you’re awake
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Wow, this is just so upfront disturbing (both pictures). Thank you for posting this.
Have you happen to have read the Terms of Service or Terms of Use?
I wonder if all health insurers now (including TennCare*) “defray costs” by data-harvesting and monetizing its subscribers?
Lovely: yet more surveillance
+
why so dang hackable?!?!
No idea what the progress has been made since April (this post below contains a multitude of further bOING posts re: how hackable medical devices are):
TL;DR = “our insecure medical devices must get regular security updates and simply must be connected to the web, gosh!” And if there’s a nice harvest o’ data piggybacked in the packets to and fro, well most people are not going to be sophisticated enough to notice, or will be forced to choose life over data privacy.
I wonder just how open source the field of medical devices will eventually become, and how soon.
People are understandably already studying this uh challenge:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298328652_Open-source_hardware_for_medical_devices
… people doing research etc. can register on ResearchGate for free.
NB: I have no idea if this line of collaboration exposes users to angry patent trolls hired by medical companies to harass the free exchangers of ideas on the matter, or what other surveillance is on deck [as is the case in nearly every other platform, blah blah Big Data blah yes it is truly horrible dammit].
There is so much money in the medical device industry, and so few checks and balances therein. Another profit center now enmeshed in the medicine-insurance-Big-Data complex. Money money money. Print the fkn money. Huh:
I try to remain hopeful.
Intelligent people seem to be tracking the issues.
*I have family in eastern Tennessee who work, in varying degrees, in the medical industry. They have a lot to say about TennCare. Since I am in Texas, I try to shut up and listen, and ask informed questions. Texas has no analogous version of TennCare. You have my sympathy. Good luck!
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I wonder if this will work on BB
There was no T.O.S. in the box nor was anything said in the several phone calls I received when they were trying to force this device down my throat!
After repeated “no’s” They switched tactics and had a “Local Rep” Call me saying they would swing over with the device.
Again, No and then a week later The BP cup showed up in my mailbox.
The box contained:
2 Packages in bubble wrap with red security stickers with the numbers being in sequence( *******11 & 12 )
First package contained the BP meter with a shinny new barcode sticker.
Second package contained the USB wall unit with matching barcode sticker.
Again, No T.O.S. just instructions on set up instructions.
Yea. No disclosure or anything. Makes you wonder how many didn’t even question getting one and what other “devices” have been sent out with no one asking anything.
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I highly encourage folks that subscribe to Netflix to watch The Bleeding Edge to better understand just how true this is.
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Thank you for your reply based on IRL experience.
Also: ouch.
A lot of ways for this situation to go wrong. Apparently, some in U.S. gummint have now figured a few these ways out:
Can’t imagine that U.S. companies are the only companies (or governments for that matter) data-mining users.
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Thank you for posting this. It reminded me to check up on the medical supplies I’m being sent in the mail, demand an itemised bill, and tell them to stop sending them. I’ve find less expensive options and will save a lot of money next year.
Indeed. On the front page today:
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JFC.
That image in the article of the blue fibers in that micrograph are horrifc. It’s like a different version of X-Files with the morgellons or something.
I actually have family and friends who have gotten that same surgery. [shudder]
In a statement, Ethicon, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, said it stands behind the safety of its pelvic mesh devices
Wow, that name sure won’t ring any alarm bells. Uh huh.
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I appreciate the timing of this piece and all of the comments. I have just taken the home sleep study and returned the device this morning. I’m curious about this:
What happened here? Is Gen X getting tested more or is there a generational epidemic? (Without wanting to stir up the anti vaxxers I also wonder this about ADHD, which I am now reading may be closely tied to sleep disorders)
for this year’s Ethicon, I’m still putting my outfit together.
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