Reddit mentions of The PCOS Workbook: Your Guide to Complete Physical and Emotional Health

Well no it's not absolutely necessary for everyone, but there are some good reasons to be on a birth control pill if you have PCOS.

One of the most significant is if you don't have regular periods, being on the pill can protect your uterus. The uterine lining is still being stimulated to grow by estrogen, but if it isn't shed regularly like normal it can get overgrown. This is called endometrial hyperplasia, and it's what can cause the 2+ week long periods some women get with PCOS. These sort of conditions are excellent for cancer cells to develop. That's why women with PCOS are at higher risk of uterine cancer...so being on a hormonal birth control pill can mitigate that risk.

Another reason is to treat the masculinizing symptoms of PCOS (acne, hair loss, facial hair grown). For this to work, though, one needs to be on a medication that will block the effects of testosterone. There are different medications that can do this, and some are birth control pills so they can be used this way to kind of kill two birds with one stone. Of course, for this to work it's important that they be anti-androgenic. Combination birth control pills contain synthetic estrogen and a compound that behaves similarly to progesterone...the progesterone mimic is the one that is the anti-androgenic compound in Yasmin, Yaz, Ocella (there are others too I just don't have an exhaustive list).

Why you bled so severely on a birth control pill, obviously I don't know but if you do see another doctor about this be it a gyno or an endocrinologist, be sure to tell them that so you and your doctor can decide if being on a birth control pill is safe for you.

As for diabetes medication, the fact that you have PCOS and they didn't talk to you about that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. PCOS is very often related to insulin resistance, so diabetes medications can help! The one your doctor was probably talking about was Metformin. It's very common and dirt cheap ($4 without insurance). I'm not on it now because it does have stomach side effects and I have IBS, so it was making me so sick I couldn't go to work. However, I took it for years as a teenager and it did really help. Not to mention, if you are insulin resistant, and if you have PCOS there's an excellent chance you are, you want to know about it! That's very significant for your future health, but there are things you can do to manage it such a changing your diet and taking medication, that can prolong or even prevent it from progressing to diabetes. At the least, you want to have your A1c tested to see how your blood glucose control is doing.

I understand the insurance concerns. Maybe you want to try this book? https://www.amazon.com/PCOS-Workbook-Complete-Physical-Emotional-ebook/dp/B004SPYNCO

There's a lot you can do yourself in terms of lifestyle changes to help control PCOS, and something like that can help explain the ins and outs of how it works.