I guess that is one way to do it. I don't know if I would do that myself. I went through the normal channels and here in SLC it went very smoothly. The thing with the "do it yourself" approach is, without the sleep study, you don't know what pressure to use. They use the analysis from the sleep study to determine what pressure to use. Also, you will consistently need to purchase new supplies on a regular basis. You'll be paying full price for those forever, whereas mine are covered by my insurance (since I went through the proper channels), so over time you will spend more money than I will.
APAP is shown to calibrate as well as a sleep study, and at least in my case, it was pretty straightforward to find the right pressure by feel.
Personally, I did steps 2-4 above, got an APAP prescription valid until the end of time, and bought a new machine online. (Maybe insurance would reimburse? I didn't even bother; time is money too.)
