Can't afford sleep study WITH insurance

Hello, I'm new here and I'm pretty scared about my health. I'm 34 year old female. I work full time, have a family, and also take care of my disabled mother-in-law. After having pancreatitus in July 2012 I put on 44 pounds of weight and suddenly started snoring badly. I've been trying to lose weight but regardless of diet changes and exercising regularly I have been gaining steadily 2 lbs a week since June of 2013. My doctor had me do a home sleep study which showed I had 7 events per hour and now I need to go to the a lab for a "formal" sleep study.

The problem is, my insurance does not consider a sleep study to be preventitive, (this bothers me,) and won't pay for the CPAP machine, either. I have to do everything out of my deductable which is $4000 and then 20% until I meet $8000. The thing is, my family is low income, but not low enough for Medicade, and technically I can't afford my insurance at all. I'm already in a lot of medical debt from my hospitalization. I can't afford to reach my deductable. We are already on the verge of bankruptcy.

My dad passed away from congestive heart failure in October and I have his CPAP machine. My doctor said I have to have the sleep study to determin the settings. But, i can't get the sleep study. I have no credit available. I've always said if something serious comes up, it will be my death, because my insurance premium is $15,000 a year and they pay for nothing (this is true, I pay $400 a month in premiums and my company pays the other $900, which is $15,600 and then I have that huge deductable, so basically my insurance is $23,000 a year for full coverage which means I'm paying for something so that I can get 0 healthcare from it.) Also I can't get a more affordable plan through the Obamacare act because the premium for an individual through my work is less than 9.5% than my wages, so there isn't any help in that area.

I don't know what I"m going to do. Are there any organizations that help you get sleep studies? I know that usually this requires you have no insurance. Everything I look at for people who can't afford sleep studies usually don't have insurance. Any advice would be helpful.

No you don't need a sleep study for titration. You can borrow/rent from a DME an auto machine for a week.

Look at your dads machine for all the numbers and names and post them. You may actually have the machine capable of doing this.
As for buying a new machine, you can buy them online from our host much cheaper then in the store or even cheaper from one of our members.

The trickiest part is finding a mask that works for you.

I have been successfully self treating as I have no insurance at all. First read this forum to get a sense of what and how to get set up. Get a CPAP with good data recording capability. I use a ResMed S9. This is important so you can titrate.
Get a low cost pulse oximeter. This is important to verify your treatment results. I'd start out with a pressure around
12. In the morning transfer your data into your computer from the CPAP and the pulseox. Check to see if you
have any obstructive events in SleepyHead or ResScan. I had many. I raised the pressure slowly over a couple days until
I had no obstructive events. I left it that way for a few weeks, then slowly lowered the pressure until the events returned, then raised until they stopped. I used to pulseox to see if I had any O2 desaturation along the way.
Now I'm at 12.4 and only have obstructive events when I have a mask leak. I still get central events about 3 to 6
everyday that are 10 seconds. I see no corresponding drop in O2 saturation so I'm not worrying about it.
If you diligently read this forum and educate yourself wherever you can on the internet you can likely get set up
for 800.00, perhaps less. My AHI started at 48.1, now I rarely have a night over 1.5 AHI. I have gone for weeks
at a time under 1.0
.

Have you looked into Awake in America or The Reggie White Foundation? I know the first helps with paying for sleep studies and the second can help with equipment. I ran across then both while researching apnea.

Just tell us what machine it is that your father had and we can help you figure out what to do. If it is an auto, we can help by telling you what your pressures should be set at with having to pay for an expensive titration. There are ways to get around having to spend the $$$$$$, so... just help us by telling us what machine it is that you have.

Oh, thank you all so much! I really appreciate all these replies and it makes me feel so much less trapped.

When I get home I will post what machine I have.

My machine is a ResMed Compact S8 if that helps. It seems to have a digital display screen with buttons and then also a dial nob. It also has a place to put water. Thank you all again.

faerie_moon wrote:My machine is a ResMed Compact S8 if that helps. It seems to have a digital display screen with buttons and then also a dial nob. It also has a place to put water. Thank you all again.

It's a basic machine and won't be able to offer any data that you might need to evaluate your therapy.
No way to know which pressure does what...unfortunately.
No way to evaluate leaks, possible events or pressure optimization.

Some people are able to get a home sleep study done for $400 or so.

Delta4 wrote:Some people are able to get a home sleep study done for $400 or so.

She has already had the home study which showed mild OSA...sleep study in question is the titration sleep study to find optimal pressure.

the good news is that ahi of 7 isn't terribly above 5 which most people try to achieve. under 5 they don't prescribe a machine. you should work toward getting a machine, but you probably aren't in a life threatening situation. my 12 month ahi average with machine is about 7.

It sounds like thing are pretty tight. I bought my brother an Auto cpap off craigslist for $75 dollars.

Have you considered shopping craigslist for a cheap Apap. Once you obtain one you could set the setting with an open range for a week.
Download the data to your computer and start dialing it in.

letsride wrote:It sounds like thing are pretty tight. I bought my brother an Auto cpap off craigslist for $75 dollars.

Have you considered shopping craigslist for a cheap Apap. Once you obtain one you could set the setting with an open range for a week.
Download the data to your computer and start dialing it in.

I just bought a Resmed S9 autoset via craigslist for $200. I have seen a few in the $300-$400 range but didn't have enough at the time. All would be good deals, and the machine would give you full data and flexibility in determining your settings.

I want to thank everyone who replied.

I have not been well for the passed few days so that's why I didn't respond. I guess now I have to figure out how to get a different machine. It's going to take time. The one relief I have is knowing it sounds like I'm not too sever just yet. But, I feel it's probably a progressive problem. I also have to figure out how to get my pancreas meds which are $200 a bottle... so $200+ for another machine and the mask and all that, it adds up. I'll figure it out someone.

But, thank you for letting me know it's not completely hopeless.

Please, please Google Reggie White Foundation and Awake in America. There's help out there if you really need/want it.