Sweet Deal on a Glucometer

It's been almost 10 years since I was first diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and in that time, I've been through a handful of glucometers. Until now, they've all been from the One Touch Ultra family. I started out with a One Touch Ultra then got a One Touch Ultra Smart, and I've also had a couple of One Touch Ultra 2's. I have no complaints about those meters. I came to them by happenstance and have stuck with them out of convenience. as all of those meters have used the same One Touch Ultra test strips.

The happenstance came when I was first diagnosed, and my doctor sent me to the pharmacy with prescriptions for a couple of different medications and a glucometer to test my blood sugar. The pharmacist had recently been visited by a manufacturer's representative and was very enthusiastic about the One Touch Ultra that had just come out. There were heavy rebates on the meter, which brought the $70 device down to almost nothing and I walked out of the store feeling like I'd just gotten one heck of a deal.

What I didn't understand at the time was that glucometer manufacturers, like razor manufacturers and ink jet printer manufacturers before them, operate on a very simple--yet insidiously profitable--business model in which they lock the consumer into continuing to purchase their very expensive consumables, be they razor blades, ink jet cartridges, or test strips, by giving away the durable part of the product--the razor handle, the printer, or the glucometer. Over the years, I blithely went along with this ploy, feeling I had no real choice except to cut costs by not testing as often and thus conserving test strips This is what I did after I lost my COBRA health coverage and had to buy my own cut rate plan with scant coverage to match.

Ironically, that all changed when my doctor gave me yet another "free" glucometer, a One Touch Ultra 2 at a recent office visit, along with a prescription for test strips. When I picked up the strips at Sam's Club, I remarked to the pharmacist about how much they cost. After all, it had been a while since I had bought strips. Trying to be helpful, the pharmacist suggested a cost effective alternative. It turns out that Wal-Mart and Sam's carry their own line of glucometers under their in-house ReliOn brand. The meter was affordably priced at just under $12.00 and the strips were about $22 for a package of 50, which was less than half the retail price of the One Touch Ultra strips I was purchasing. Even with my insurance--such as it is--the strips cost me almost $34. By comparison, the ReliOn meter and the strips together cost about the same as the strips alone for my One Touch Ultra! Needless to say, the pharmacist got my attention.

I went ahead and purchased my One Touch Ultra test strips, but my curiosity was piqued, so I went online and researched the ReliOn meters. At Sams, I had been shown two models, the ReliOn Confirm and its slightly smaller sibling, the ReliOn Micro, the latter being an obvious knockoff of the One Touch Ultra Mini. These are manufactured by an American company called ArkRay. The The user reviews I read of both the devices and the company were uniformly favorable. By the time I went to bed that night, I had decided to go with the Confirm as soon as my present supply of One Touch Ultra strips runs out. I decided on the Confirm over the Micro because it stores more test results than the Micro, and beside, it's not that much bigger. I ended up making the purchase ahead of schedule when I saw the meter on sale for $9.00 at Wal-Mart about a week later.

Initially, I was a bit concerned about locking myself into Wal-Mart as a sole supplier of test strips. Why would I want to do that when I can get the One Touch Ultra strips anywhere? I reassured myself with two realizations--The first was that Wal-Mart is everywhere. The second is that ArkRay also sells these meters under their own name, so the strips can be found elsewhere--and at a comparable price.

So how does the Reli-On confirm stack up to my One Touch Ultra 2? Very favorably, actually. Here's a breakdown of the major differences I have seen:

• The Confirm is longer, but slimmer than the One Touch. The entire package, in its zipper pouch is smaller and lighter than that of the One Touch. Winner: ReliOn
• The Confirm's display is not as sophisticated as that of the One Touch, but it's perfectly readable. The Confirm's display also lacks a  back light, which the original One Touch Ultra also lacks but the One Touch Ultra Smart and Ultra 2 both have. It's hard to really count this as an advantage, since I have almost never used the back lights on the meters I have that are so equipped. Let's face it. If you have enough ambient light to see the blood sample you're taking, you have enough light to read the display. Winner: It's really a draw, but we'll give it to One Touch.
• The only minor shortcoming I've seen is the Confirm shows a blinking icon as it makes its seven-second countdown, whereas the One Touch gives a numerical five-second countdown. The Winner: Technically, it's One Touch; but frankly, that's not a big deal. 
• The Confirm requires a smaller blood sample (three microliters as opposed to five for the One Touch). A couple of microliters doesn't sound like a whole lot, but a smaller sample means it's easier--and less painful--to get a successful test. It is not uncommon to waste two or three test strips to get a successful reading. We're talkin' real money here.  The Winner: ReliOn
• The Confirm's test strips are self-coding, whereas the One Touch Ultra 2 must be coded manually. Admittedly, the One Touch people have addressed this by now issuing all strips with a code of 25, but I've still got a few older ones with a different code. The winner: ReliOn because the meter actually reads the code from the test strip.
• In side-by-side tests, the Confirm is usually within five points of the reading given by the One Touch. No real winner here, but it's nice to see ReliOn keeping up with the big guys.
• The big difference is in customer service. I called the number on the back of the meter to ask about the lancing device, which seemed to be defective and was answered on the second ring by a live human being!!! No automated answering system, no endless labyrinth of menus, just a person with a pleasant disposition, who listened to my complaint, and agreed without arguing to send me a new lancing device at no charge. By comparison, the last time I was on the phone with the people at LifeScan, which manufactures the One Touch Ultra meters, I spent more time on hold than I did actually talking to anyone, and they had the usual morass of menus that we've come to expect from corporate phone centers these days. The winner: ReliOn--by a long shot!

So if you add up the score, you can plainly see the ReliOn Confirm is the winner, especially since the areas where it beat the One Touch were areas that are more significant to my needs. The ReliOn meter has already paid for itself, and longer I use it, lower the total cost of ownership will become. I also plan to check and see what--if anything--my insurance company will pay toward them, but even at full retail, it's still more cost effective than using a name brand meter.

And that raises the final question of what I've bee paying for all these years I've been a One Touch user. The only answer I can come up with is their big ad campaigns, that and a couple of "free" meters. I still have quite a few One Touch Ultra test strips left to use up, but I'm seeing that my days as a One Touch user are definitely numbered.