This is SO ironic! Definitely in view of the legal bribery going on throughout all levels of government called Lobbying!
I, too, like the spirit of Tandem. Seeing as it is the only alternative to Medtronics within the U.S. currently (not considering the tubeless), it definitely is a good one. I may consider scraping up almost $5K to pay out-of-pocket for it.
When will our health system join the rest of the “civilized” world? SIGH
Not that I disagree in general, but I believe I’ve read from our UK members that the choice of pumps under NH is much more restricted (Medtronic only?) than it is here. Happy to stand corrected if I’m wrong about that.
I think the Omnipod is still available in UK. Although I do agree with @Willow4 that in terms of competition and such, it is not such a factor.
Not for any reason of issues or anything like that but it seems that people tend to have a very strong preference for either tubed or tubeless pump. So if somebody wants a tubeless pump, they appear very unlikely to switch to a tubed pump regardless of who makes. Granted this is quite a generalization and individuals do not always follow the group.
The Dana pump from SOOIL might also be available still in the UK as well as the Accu-Check pump?
It would be interesting to hear from somebody with first-hand knowledge of the UK in terms of insulin pump availability although it does sounds like the UK has a wider selection of choice then in the USA.
Yeah it’s a pretty fundamental distinction and people may choose to tolerate inconveniences that others would see as deal-breakers in order to stick with that particular preference. I think it’s particularly huge for toddlers and young kids, where tubing is just insanely impractical. Wouldn’t surprise me to learn that’s where the lion’s share of Omnipod sales are, though obviously plenty of adults prefer tubeless too.
Happy to see you around! 
I would disagree on one aspect.
Our Ped Endo who works for one of the top National Children’s Hospitals and who has hundreds of direct T1D pediatric patients and is likely familiar with thousands of Children diagnosed with diabetes has specifically told us they are seeing Tandem being picked for their Pediatric patients in very large numbers.
For a new patient (including Pediatric) who has not yet made the decision whether tube or tubeless is the best choice for them, there are a number of very specific reasons why Pediatrics may find the Tandem/Dexcom combination to be their best choice.
IMHO once somebody makes that decision about tubed vs tubeless and has followed through to using a pump, they are most unlikely to switch and go in the other direction. Obviously it happens. I simply do not believe it happens in large numbers. However prior to using a pump, it is my opinion that the choice between tubed vs tubeless is not such an overriding factor in the decision making process.
Wasn’t for me, but I was an adult. Anyway, if I had my latest pump decision to do over, the Tandem remote update capability might easily win out as the single overriding decision factor. This nonsense of being stuck with whatever capabilities the pump shipped with for four years—five for Medicare—is just insane in this day and age. Here I have this 670G that in its current state of development just doesn’t work for me, but all that would be required to make it hugely useful are some fairly rational tweaks to the UI and control software. And to read about improvements they’ll be doing in future rollouts—all of them just a matter of tweaking the software/firmware—that might make it useable for me, and I won’t see any of that until my warranty runs out. Just crazy. I don’t have to buy a new laptop every time there’s an OS update f’r cripesakes.
That’s useful to know. My last faulty Vibe last year was due to the date/time needing to be reset each battery change, which didn’t actually bother me nor was the reason I rang up about (I got an error message, the pump was struggling to rewind/wind…turned out I’d reused the tubing too many times oops but easily rectified ).