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Insurance Should Cover Diabetic Alert Dogs
Final signature count: 16,865
16,865 signatures toward our 30,000 goal
Sponsor: The Diabetes Site
These dogs can save lives, but prohibitive costs keep many from acquiring them. Insurance companies should cover them!
Service dogs transform the lives of their charges. From assisting the blind and deaf to helping returning veterans cope with PTSD, the positive impact of their help upon their owners cannot be denied.
People with diabetes can also benefit from being paired with a service dog. With the proper training, dogs can use their superior sense of smell to alert their owners to fluctuating blood sugar1. This is especially important among Type 1 diabetics who suffer from a condition known as Hypoglycemic Unawareness. This condition prevents a person from feeling when his or her blood sugar is rapidly falling or is dangerously low2.
Other symptoms, such as stomach cramps, nausea, dizziness, or even seizures, are the only hints sufferers receive without testing their blood sugar. If left untreated, hypoglycemia can even result in unconsciousness, coma, or death in as few as twenty minutes3.
For those with Hypoglycemic Unawareness, an alert dog might mean the difference between life and death4.
Diabetic alert dogs are trained to recognize symptoms of fluctuating blood sugar, sometimes both highs and lows, and alert their charge to their condition, even waking a sleeping person should the need arise5.
There’s no denying a diabetic alert dog could save countless lives and improve the quality of life for their owners. So why don’t more people have them?
Their cost.
A diabetes alert dog can cost up to $20,000. For the average person, this price tag can prevent people with diabetes from acquiring the service dog assistance they require6.
People with diabetes shouldn’t be asked to shoulder this financial burden on their own when they pay insurance premiums! Tell the U.S.‘s top five Insurance providers and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to cover the costs of these dogs for any diabetic whose doctors’ recommend them.
