I talked to my doc yesterday and they had a sleep clinic call me to set up an appointment.  When I told the clinic that I had no insurance she said the overnight study cost $1200 but they have an auto-pap (?) machine that they loan free for two weeks to people with no insurance.  What will this machine do for me?  Will this help?  Any advice or information will be appreciated.
Thanks, Becky    

Hello.  I am in a similar situation.  Although I do have health insurance, it is not very good, and I am not sure that it would cover just an expensive test.  Did you go through with the take home?  Are there any research centers recruiting volunteers?

I have an auto pap machine for treatment and it will certainly give them much of the data recorded during the sleep lab test.  It will NOT however be able to tell what sleep stages you achieved (this was important to me since I barely spent any time in stage 3 and never hit either stage 4 or REM), nor will it tell you about any periodic limb movements nor does it measure your oxygen saturation levels which are very critical as they determine how badly your oxygen levels drop during an apnea event (perhaps they would loan you a machine for that as well?).  It will tell you how many times you stopped breathing during the night and how many of those events were apnea related.  

Not sure if when they give the machine out as a proxy for a test it has different settings/set up - but I would think it will also tell you what pressure you would need should you require cpap therapy long term.

I would discuss the options with your prescribing doctor to see how he/she feels about this semi test.  

Another thing I would consider pursuing is discussing with the sleep lab what rate they would truly recover from an insurance company.  I know that the sleep center I went to charges $1775 - but they have a negotiated rate with my insurance company of $900 - so that's all they got for each of my nights there.  Perhaps the lab would allow you to pay the rate they have negotiated with insurance companies (although I don't know if that would be any more palatable for your wallet).

I am also new to all this - but figured I'd share what little I have learned.  Hope it helps.