At the time I left the UK the cost for T1Ds was zero because people with chronic conditions got free prescriptions, even if the prescription was unrelated to the condition! I did have problems getting an adequate supply of test strips, but that was because of the (family) doctor; the doctor has to follow the health system regulations as part of his or her contract and, as non-specialists, individual doctors can be somewhat inflexible.
Anyway I think that is moot now with CGMs; the PM (LADA) is using a Libre and there isn’t any special health system for MPs, unlike here.
I was considering swapping to the Animas Ping this year because I was getting fed up with the Omnipod water proofing and the overall clunkiness of the system. Obviously that got nixed when Animas dropped out of the NA market but that’s not a problem in the EU.
Anyway, Medicare is the best we have - my insurance company cancels their policies at the end of every year and comes up with new ones that I have to apply for. This year they cancelled my HSA eligible plan and wanted to enroll me in on that wasn’t HSA eligible. That could have cost me as much as $3500 extra (depending on my marginal tax rate - US+OR). Fortunately they still had an HSA eligible plan which I had signed up for by 10am on Nov 1.
At least with Medicare the rules are written down, well, except for Part D. Based on the CostCo/EdgePark analysis I posted a couple of days ago:
Killing Part D and putting it into CMS along with allowing the CMS to negotiate prices would drop prices by a factor of about 5.
John Bowler