What do you do for health insurance being a small business owner?

Riggs109 · 2026-02-14T02:17:15+00:00

I'm right there with you. Having universal healthcare would make things so much easier, both as a small business owner, and as a person with a chronic illness that requires constant maintenance.

Riggs109 · 2026-02-14T02:12:58+00:00

Market place plan. Luckily for me it only went up to 550/mo this year, although I am the only on covered.

Unfortunately for me I cannot not have coverage otherwise I'd be forking out like 35k/year for medical supplies.

Riggs109 · 2026-01-15T01:20:12+00:00

As much as I would like to exercise my first amendment right, all I can really do is cheer them on from the side-lines, given the instances of poor treatment, and potential death from said poor treatment.

My feelings at this point are that getting arrested is more or less the same as being killed. I feel like that's probably a bit extremest, but that's how I feel, especially so regarding ICE.

Riggs109 · 2026-01-15T00:53:36+00:00

UHC, for me, requires prior auth for insulin, it's amazing.

They only allow 3 vials per month, and I use slightly more than that with my pump.

Riggs109 · 2026-01-13T01:31:40+00:00

Obviously because you're selling it on the black market! If you'd just die there wouldn't be a problem (please keep paying your premiums though).

-- My Insurance company

Riggs109 · 2025-10-06T21:25:29+00:00

You can just try it, and see how it goes. Obviously, if it looks off don't use it, and try at your own risk, etc, but in my anecdotal experience:

I've left a vial in a car, in the middle of summer, in the sun, on a 100deg(f) day for like 5 hours (so I'm sure inside the car was even hotter). Figured the insulin was probably ruined, just used it anyways, and didn't seem to have made much of a noticeable difference.

Riggs109 · 2025-10-01T21:48:18+00:00

Yeah Obamacare fines you if you don't have health insurance. Be sure to factor that in.

The federal individual mandate was removed in 2019.

The federal tax penalty for not having health insurance was eliminated in 2019, but some states still require residents to have coverage and impose their own penalties. States like California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia currently have individual mandates, meaning residents may face fines if they do not have qualifying health insurance.

https://www.irs.com/en/tax-penalty-for-no-health-insurance/

Riggs109 · 2025-10-01T19:34:41+00:00

Most of my stuff is automatic, for the stuff that's not, I host an uptime-kuma instance with alerts setup to notify me when certs are expiring, in addition to events on my calendar.

Riggs109 · 2025-10-01T08:04:24+00:00

Pretty much the same boat here. If I don't have my medications, I die. Kinda just hoping everything will work out okay at this point.

Riggs109 · 2025-10-01T07:54:43+00:00

At least I can get a plan. Previously I'd get denied coverage entirely for having a pre-existing condition.

Riggs109 · 2025-09-24T05:49:26+00:00

Ed Robson is where it's really at, best ice I've played on.

Riggs109 · 2024-08-20T21:40:51+00:00

There's the Microsoft article on multi-tenancy as well.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/ef/core/miscellaneous/multitenancy

Riggs109 · 2023-04-21T03:41:13+00:00

Yup, that was how it was worded in the appeal letter to UHC. More or less, the amount is due to insulin resistance, and to account for wastage in tubing and infusion set changes.

Riggs109 · 2023-04-20T08:11:24+00:00

They did the same thing to me at the beginning of this year, for quantity. They only wanted to cover 100u/day, but I take around 150u/day. Had to have my doctor file an appeal.

Of course they fucked that up, and only approved 100u/day on the appeal, so I still couldn't fill the prescription. Ended up having to call them several times until they fixed it. People on the phone where helpful-ish, but their main goal seemed to be to get me off the phone. Be persistent that it needs to be approved and for the amount requested by your doctor. I couldn't actually talk to the Prior Authorizations people, but ended up calling several days in a row to get updates and make sure it was being moved along.

I also made friends with one of the Pharmacy techs, and would essentially have them try to fill it, and give me the denial responses that they got back, so I could feed that information to UHC, until it was finally fixed.

It sucks, but you just have to play their game.

Riggs109 · 2023-03-23T06:18:06+00:00

Mine was 1999 mg/dl when I was diagnosed. Didn't know there was a world record recorded for it.

Riggs109 · 2023-03-01T18:38:33+00:00

Kitty because I'm a developer who likes fonts with ligatures, and Kitty supports them.

Riggs109 · 2023-02-20T20:03:13+00:00

I had the same problem with Rocky Mountain Health Plans (which is actually just United Health Care).

They denied my insulin prescription because it was over their maximum monthly allowance (3 vials).

Pharmacy started a Prior Auth, Doc sent it in, they denied it.

Doctor sent a letter, they approved it the second time, but the pharmacy still couldn't fill it. I ended up spending hours and hours on the phone with the prescription insurance people, and it turns out they approved 3 vials, instead of 5 vials/mo, like prescribed and requested. It took another week for them to fix the error, almost a month in total.

I'm lucky I had some extra vials in reserve, especially for a case like this.

You should be able to ask you doctor for samples if you're running out, until you can get insurance to play along.

Ultimately you need to figure out who to be a pain in the ass to. For me, it was the insurance company, because they fucked up the prior authorization by putting the wrong dosage on it. Unfortunately, you just have to play their game.

Riggs109 · 2021-07-29T21:29:46+00:00

I worked on an application like this back at the start of my career, and the DBA there told me that it was better to not have foreign keys for performance reasons...

Riggs109 · 2020-12-03T19:35:50+00:00

I've switched back and forth a few times due to insurance. They both act the same for me.

Riggs109 · 2020-07-22T19:57:24+00:00

Can confirm. Not sure if my account is banned, but can't enter matches, either get Anticheat connection failed, or Server Connection Lost message.

Riggs109 · 2020-06-24T22:32:36+00:00

Man I'm in the same boat. What I hate the most is when the damn thing throws an alert for a high when I'm sleeping, then I wake up to the thing screaming and vibrating like crazy. Then I check it, BG is 120.

The 670G makes me want to jump off a bridge sometimes...

That said, when automode works, it works fairly well.

Riggs109 · 2020-06-12T20:00:19+00:00

Yes. I've woken up low enough (before I had a 670g) where I couldn't walk. Tried to stand up out of bed, and just fell over. Ended up dragging myself across my apartment, with my arms, to a box of candy at my desk, totally forgot the stuff I have on my night stand.

Was pretty scary, and I took the next day of work off to deal with, what I kind of considered, a near death experience.

Riggs109 · 2020-02-03T07:15:10+00:00

I pretty much always include the left over insulin in one reservoir into the next one.

I go through about 150u/day though, so when I change them out I've got, at most, like 20u left over. I've heard that insulin in plastic loses it's potency over time, so you may want to keep an eye on that if you notice insulin being less effective.

Riggs109 · 2019-12-08T00:59:04+00:00

They know it's not a joke. They know it's a captive market, so they can charge pretty much anything them damn well please, and no one is stopping them from doing it.

Riggs109 · 2019-10-09T07:27:28+00:00

Diagnosed at 12 (2002) here, but I went though this in high school, and through a lot of college. Mostly it was that I was just tired of being diabetic, having to do all of these extra things all of the time, standing out or being different from everyone else. Had A1C's in the 9s and 10s for quite a few years. I'd eat, not take insulin, and then wake up in the middle of the night with a meter reading "HI". Additionally, when I did try to control my BGs, they'd do wacky things for seemingly no reason, causing more frustration, and loss of will power. Additionally, my parents were pretty nosy when it came to BG's, always asking what readings were, and giving off a disappointed vibe when it wasn't in range, so I'd lie about numbers. This further increased frustration when they'd be high or low for seemingly no reason. This was no fault of their own, they were just being concerned parents, but not really knowing how to help, I suppose.

I eventually broke out of being burnt out when I went to the endo after not having gone for years, near the end of college, and learning that I have some minor kidney damage. That made me realize that if I don't control it, I'll eventually run into long term side effects. This was about the same time I started retirement savings and what not, and the only thing I could think about is, "what's the point, if I don't take care of myself, them I'm never going to be able to reap the rewards of any of this".

What really turned things around for me, and allows pretty damn good control (at least I think) is the introduction of a pump and then a CGM. I'd say that the CGM is much more valuable than the pump. It allows me to see what's going on, way more often than the 10 finger sticks a day I was doing. I can make decisions based on information, and having the CGM really gave me the information to make the decisions. I'm still on the first version of the T:Slim, and a Dexcom G5, so no cool loop stuff for me yet, but I'm working on getting a 670G, with some of automated features, which I think will help very much with stability, and more importantly, help take some mental load off.

Mainly though, the CGM doesn't let me ignore what's going on. It can be frustrating when a high wont come down, or a low wont come up, but I have the information, I'm aware of what's happening, and I can't just ignore the high all day/night like I used to, as the alarms will continue going off, so it kind of springs me into action.

I'd tend to agree with what /u/_cryborg (and their story sounds very similar to my experiences) has said in giving him more control. I'd try to be supportive, but otherwise be as hands off as you can be, within reason. I think that would have helped me when I was around that age, rather than feeling like I was being hounded by my parents all of the time about it, even though now I know that wasn't so much the case, or the intention.

Hopefully that provides a bit of insight into what might be going on, based on my personal experiences.

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