There has always been an economic divide amongst the classes of the western world. For many, being able to access the full-service medical care they need is often full of financial barriers. For others, access to quality, full-service health care is simple and abundant.
Sell Diabetic’s goal is to bridge the gap between those who can afford their diabetic supplies and those who cannot.
Many diabetics who receive monthly testing supplies are fully covered by insurance that often provides them with the ability to purchase more testing supplies than they need. For others, their insurance coverage does not provide them with enough coverage every month to purchase the amount of testing supplies that they require.
“It all comes down to how frequently a person tests their blood sugar,” Sell Diabetic’s Sam Davidson says. “We find that a lot of people don’t test their blood sugar as often as they should, and those people end up with a lot of left-over supplies at the end of the month that go to waste.”
On the other side of the scale, there are many customers who need more testing supplies than they are covered for every month, but they can’t afford to pay the full over-the-counter price at a drug store.
That’s where Sell Diabetic comes in. They find customers who get more testing supplies than they need, and they offer them cash for their unused unsealed testing strips.
The idea was born out of a desire to solve a very prominent problem in the western world. Davidson, whose mother is a diabetic and is on permanent disability, was not being given enough testing supplies by her insurance company. She’s a Type 2 diabetic and tests her sugar five to six times per day.
“I remember being on the phone with her insurance company, just hounding them over not giving my mother enough of an allowance for testing strips,” Davidson says.
Davidson’s mother couldn’t afford to just walk into the drug store and spend $100 on a box of strips, and her insurance was giving her only one box a month.
“I just finally threw my hands up and put an ad online asking if anyone had extra’s they’d be willing to sell monthly so that my mother could test regularly without breaking the bank,” Davidson says. “I was amazed at people’s generosity. I got a ton of emails from people offering their strips for free. I said to myself: I can’t take these for free. I need to at least pay something for them.
“And that’s when the idea for SellDiabetic was born. I realized that there were lots of people out there who got more supplies monthly than they needed, and others like my mother who weren’t getting enough and needed a way to get what they needed without torching the bank account.”
Sell Diabetic has just launched within the Okanagan Valley and is currently looking for customers who have extra sealed and unexpired testing strips that they are looking to sell. It offers same-day cash pickups in and around Kelowna and Penticton.
This article is written by or on behalf of the sponsoring client and does not necessarily reflect the views of Okanagan Edge.
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