18 replies to this topic

[Seeking2012]

Ok so I just finished calling every "community" health clinic--which basically means "free" or "sliding scale" clinic--in my county. None of them offer Celiac testing. Even the hospital labs that I just called don't directly test Celiac--they send them out to another lab to do it. WOW huh????

And Celiac testing isn't even covered by Medicare in most cases--which I don't have anyway, but looked it up out of curiosity.

So my only real chance at getting a Celiac test seems to be to order it myself through one of the above-mentioned links. That's gonna hurt to the tune of $200-$300. I don't have it but my fiance has offered to pay it for me. I hate to ask so much of him, and it will probably come out negative due to the fact that blood testing for celiac disease isn't very accurate...

But my sister has been diagnosed with celiac disease. So I should do it.

[GottaSki]

Ok so I just finished calling every "community" health clinic--which basically means "free" or "sliding scale" clinic--in my county. None of them offer Celiac testing. Even the hospital labs that I just called don't directly test Celiac--they send them out to another lab to do it. WOW huh????

And Celiac testing isn't even covered by Medicare in most cases--which I don't have anyway, but looked it up out of curiosity.

So my only real chance at getting a Celiac test seems to be to order it myself through one of the above-mentioned links. That's gonna hurt to the tune of $200-$300. I don't have it but my fiance has offered to pay it for me. I hate to ask so much of him, and it will probably come out negative due to the fact that blood testing for celiac disease isn't very accurate...

But my sister has been diagnosed with celiac disease. So I should do it.

If you have removed gluten or even gone gluten light the tests will not be as accurate as possible.

If you haven't removed gluten, but have symptoms - have the blood drawn and then remove ALL gluten - this is often the best test.

[ravenwoodglass]

Ok so I just finished calling every "community" health clinic--which basically means "free" or "sliding scale" clinic--in my county. None of them offer Celiac testing. Even the hospital labs that I just called don't directly test Celiac--they send them out to another lab to do it. WOW huh????

And Celiac testing isn't even covered by Medicare in most cases--which I don't have anyway, but looked it up out of curiosity.

So my only real chance at getting a Celiac test seems to be to order it myself through one of the above-mentioned links. That's gonna hurt to the tune of $200-$300. I don't have it but my fiance has offered to pay it for me. I hate to ask so much of him, and it will probably come out negative due to the fact that blood testing for celiac disease isn't very accurate...

But my sister has been diagnosed with celiac disease. So I should do it.

I don't know if this is available in your area but here we have hospitals and labs that will charge a sliding or no fee scale to folks that have a low income and no insurance. You would apply through the hospitals finance office. My local hospitals will cover anything billed by the hospital including lab work that might need to be sent out. The only draw back is they don't cover the private physicans bills. You might be able to get the sliding or no fee scale from the hospital and then go into a clinic with the list of the tests needed so they can write the script to take to the hospitals lab.
If none of that is possible then you do have the option of giving the diet a good strict try for a few months. The one big draw back to that is being gluten free or gluten light will mean a good chance of a false negative on future testing without a gluten challenge.

[Seeking2012]

I don't know if this is available in your area but here we have hospitals and labs that will charge a sliding or no fee scale to folks that have a low income and no insurance. You would apply through the hospitals finance office. My local hospitals will cover anything billed by the hospital including lab work that might need to be sent out. The only draw back is they don't cover the private physicans bills. You might be able to get the sliding or no fee scale from the hospital and then go into a clinic with the list of the tests needed so they can write the script to take to the hospitals lab.
If none of that is possible then you do have the option of giving the diet a good strict try for a few months. The one big draw back to that is being gluten free or gluten light will mean a good chance of a false negative on future testing without a gluten challenge.

But I wouldn't be able to just walk in to the lab and get the test done directly; I'd need to be written up for lab work by a doctor, and that means I'd have to go and see the doctor first (and the sliding scale thing would not apply to the doctor's visit), and doctors visits can cost $100-$300, so that kind of makes applying for the hospital's lab sliding scale fee pointless because I'd end up paying about the same anyways as I would by going to DirectLabs and just paying for that out of pocket.

I've heard of hospitals and universities doing free celiac testing but it only involves the tTG IgA one, not all the others in the complete panel. I'll end up having to pay for the entire thing out of pocket; there is just no way around it...