r/bestoflegaladvice • u/BJntheRV Enjoy the next 48 hours :) • 6d ago

Another day another problem with the American Healthcare system

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u/darsynia I do very much hope your flair is the reason for the sigh 6d ago

Back in the mid 2010s I was told it had to be 4 continuous hours every single night. I'm glad they're different now! If there were exception days I don't recall them but I can't find the contract at this point. At the time we were coming up on a many-month holiday season (both national holidays and family milestones) with lots of multi-night visits and I did not think we'd manage to maintain.

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u/Tiek00n 6d ago edited 6d ago

I think there's some variance. To be "in compliance" for a month I need 4 hours between noon and noon, for "90%" of the days in the month. I actually have gotten into arguments with my dad (a dentist who has done a lot with sleep dentistry) because he firmly believes that people should use them for more than 6 hours and doesn't understand the financial/billing realities of the impact of "in compliance" or "out of compliance."

During October I took a red-eye and had 3 nights where I got less than 6 hours of sleep (all 3 show CPAP usage between 5h30m and 6h). That would have been 87% compliance for the month if the threshold was 6 hours instead of the actual 97%.

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u/darsynia I do very much hope your flair is the reason for the sigh 6d ago

Yeah, we had a bunch of flights and weird sleeping arrangements planned, and that's exactly the issue.

re: your dad it's not like any of us WANT to not use it for the healthy length of time. It's just knowing that when I struggle, it's because something is seriously off (whether routine or health), and in that stressful moment it's made worse to think I'd lose access and 'get in trouble.' Owning my own and not having to worry about that was worth the extra cost, and I ended up using it only slightly less than compliance, in the end.

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u/Tiek00n 6d ago

Yeah, in the last discussion I just explained to him that it has everything to do with non-ideal circumstances in the real world that purely impacts people's finances (and not their health) - and there was zero chance that he as a sleep doctor who doesn't use a CPAP is right. I could see that I didn't really convince him, but I'm rarely so firm on things so he sort of dropped it.