Petition to have freestylelibre on nhs

Hi samantha. This has been shared before i believe!

the government assumes everyone is rich enough to pay £50 per week for these sensors, and whilst on the dole its impossible unless you have a relative or someone close to pay for you which is like asking someone else to pay for your illness rather than paying for their own, I don't want to have to rely on a family member to pay for something that should potentially be on the NHS and for something as life-threatening as diabetes, but I think its not on the nhs because there are so many blood glucose meters out there that make the libre more of a convenience than a necessity.

A few myths to clear up here. The government does not decide whether to allow something on prescription. NICE does.

Secondly, the cost of the sensors is only cheaper than test strips if you use 10 a day. Given that more than 60% of UK T1s test less than once a day, in the grand scheme of things the costs don't add up.

What you need is to have Abbott show that the use of Libre changes behaviour of this 60% so that their health outcomes improve.

nmr1991 said:

which is like asking someone else to pay for your illness rather than paying for their own, I don't want to have to rely on a family member to pay for something that should potentially be on the NHS

Click to expand...

You have to realize that that's essentially what you'd be doing if this was approved through the NHS. That money has to come from somewhere which means one of two things: coverage of other treatments may be lost to free up the funds to pay for this, or taxes increase which means other people are paying for it.

I'm a CGM user myself, but I'm very critical of these petitions and proposals. It's not because I want to hog the technology all to myself. It's because I have yet to see a respectable proposal about how this could be provided and how it would be paid for.

Here in the US, there is a bill about getting CGM technology approved for people on Medicare (usually the elderly or disabled). I did not support it (yet) because there was no action plan about how it would be implemented.

I'm a firm believer that the first step should be pushing for the subsidization of CGM technology rather than 100% funding. Partial funding has a much higher chance of getting approved, leads to a larger user base, which provides more data about how effective the technology is, which eventually leads to 100% funding.

I'm not sure if CGM comes with a pump but you can get them on the NHS if you do some sort of 5 tests a day regime to let the hospital know you are willing to improve your health as theres something wrong with your medication or you are doing everything right but something is getting in the way that you cannot prevent. I think theres like a pump trial period to see if you eligible and they fund it for you if you manage the rigorous testing regime, bearing in mind this is for either the ones with really bad control or doing all they can but their meds are letting them down or having too much hypo sensitivity and not much awareness.