Response to Comment on Schwartz et al. The Time Is Right for a New Classification System for Diabetes: Rationale and Implications of the β-Cell–Centric Classification Schema. Diabetes Care 2016;39:179–186

We thank Drs. Kalra and and Baruah for their comments (1) on our article (2) in an effort improve the utility of our proposed β-cell–centric classification. We agree that “treatment” is more important than “classification.” We find it frustrating that governments and insurers often think otherwise, limiting therapies of choice on the basis of labels of diabetes mellitus (DM) that are not optimally useful. Thus a “precision medicine” classification system that identifies specific causes of hyperglycemia and their corresponding therapies augurs for payment coverage parity across the range of glucose-lowering medications for patients with any form of DM. Although the insulin-to-glucagon ratio (IGR) construct is interesting and could serve as a “marker” to help choose between various therapies in our approach, our …