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Libre Sensors prices going up again?

Natalie1974 said:
Hi All. I’ve not been around for a while so I’m not terribly up to date...I’ve not been able to purchase libre from anywhere local so I’ve been buying online as normal. However having just lost my job I thought I would see if I could get them any cheaper. I discovered the Superdrug post and called them this morning to see if I could place an order. I was told that the price had gone up due to a number of people bulk buying them cheap and selling them online. Abbott Freestyle had cottoned on and increased the cost to them. I’m so sad to hear this...it makes me so angry that people do this...it ruins it for the people who genuinely rely on it
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£67 on Amazon for example.
 
Copernicus said:
Seem to be in short supply again. Rang round all my local Asda pharmacy's and none had any in stock.
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My local Asda does not have any Libre in stock - they order them on request.
For me, I phoned, ask to order them and they were available to collect two days later.

That said, it was more than a month ago so I do not know what the UK stocks for Libre are like at the moment.
 
A few weeks ago i had a faulty sensor, Abbott offered a replacement but told me there is a delay in delivery. It took two weeks to arrive, usually delivery takes 1-2 days.
 
Have a way to meet them half way, have the option of bypassing the criteria by paying half the cost yourself and the rest by the nhs.
 
Copernicus said:
£67 on Amazon for example.
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I get why they do it and right now I’m kind of tempted as Christmas is the worst time be without it...but there is no support from Freestyle if it is faulty and an awful lot of m
helensaramay said:
My local Asda does not have any Libre in stock - they order them on request.
For me, I phoned, ask to order them and they were available to collect two days later.

That said, it was more than a month ago so I do not know what the UK stocks for Libre are like at the moment.
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I’ve ordered some over the phone to my most local Asda (about an hour away) and they reckon they’ll be there for tomorrow...we shall see. It annoys me massively that big companies can access them more freely than the the people who actually rely on them
 
Natalie1974 said:
Curious...do tell
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Just saying, with all these cutbacks the nhs is getting, all we're asking for is a more convenient way of testing our blood sugars, in their eyes we can just stick with fingerpricking until a cheaper option is available, and from the looks of things the freestyle libre and sensors look like it costs more than what is required to manufacture lancets and test strips. I'm not suggesting i know of an exact way to meet half-way on the funding of the libre.
 
@scorpius14 - I've put some thought into this in the past and the real answer is that it's extremely difficult to do. One idea was a "personal glucose testing budget", where you have two options.
  1. Continue as now
  2. You receive 80% of the total cash required for fingerstick testing 8x per day (£1095) as a budget, which you can use on whatever monitoring you like.
The issue of course with the latter is "What happens when you run out of budget?". If you consider that 80% of the cost of testing 10x per day is a little less than full coverage of Libre on the NHS and less than half of the coverage of Dexcom G6 on public subscription, you can see a place where a lot of people exhaust their budget half way through the year and instead of sensibly putting aside what they are required to pay personally, simply use the remaining 20% on "free test strips" and test far less frequently than they need.

There are of course two stipulations on this:
  1. Something like 1/3 of UK T1Ds test far less than once per day, so the spend vs budget for T1Ds gets blown out of all proportion.
  2. The cost of administration of scheme like this is likely to be relatively high compared to the model we have no, a cost that I'm not sure the NHS would want to burden itself with.
Once you start looking at something like this, where there is a co-pay, it also opens up the spectre of a US insurance based model via the back-door, rather than the mutualized insurance models prevalent across Europe.
 
scorpius14 said:
Just saying, with all these cutbacks the nhs is getting, all we're asking for is a more convenient way of testing our blood sugars, in their eyes we can just stick with fingerpricking until a cheaper option is available, and from the looks of things the freestyle libre and sensors look like it costs more than what is required to manufacture lancets and test strips. I'm not suggesting i know of an exact way to meet half-way on the funding of the libre.
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I get where you’re coming from and for the most part I agree...however the cost of the Libre to the NHS is significantly cheaper than we are able to purchase it for. If you consider that the majority of users will check their bloods in the region of 20 times a day, I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t and couldn’t prick my finger that many times a day but testing that often gives me much better control of my BG. The better my control the more I save the the NHS in the long run. I’m currently paying nearly £100 a month for Libre and really only use finger sticks when I’m driving or I disagree my my Libre readings. I don’t know what a pot of glucose sticks costs the NHS or what they would pay for the Libre but I would be interested to see a price comparison based on testing 20 times a day. Perhaps we could pay for the glucose sticks?
 
On a similar note, my local Asda did get them in withing 24 hours of me asking, they do stock them all the time (usually) but will also order them in as requested. If it costs the NHS £35 per sensor to buy, then why can't we buy them direct from the NHS at that price plus say a small admin charge of £5. A lot of GP practices have a pharmacy attached so they order in and store medicines anyway.
 
Copernicus said:
On a similar note, my local Asda did get them in withing 24 hours of me asking, they do stock them all the time (usually) but will also order them in as requested. If it costs the NHS £35 per sensor to buy, then why can't we buy them direct from the NHS at that price plus say a small admin charge of £5. A lot of GP practices have a pharmacy attached so they order in and store medicines anyway.
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Quick update...the order I placed at Asda on Monday was received and collected yesterday....that’s Christmas covered
 
Its VAT . asda claim it back we get it for 44.00 Superdrug dont do vat theyve put the cost up to 50.00 or there abouts but with a private px ive got one last week ..35 quid from superdrug. Asda pharmacist doesnt know how they do it .all fishy
 
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