I pay cash for my supplies. I would never do the subscription thing! Since the sensors can be restarted, I can usually get a full month’s wear from a single one. You won’t be able to get that sort of life at first, those post-meal highs you’ve talked about will shorten the life of the sensor. But once you use the CGM data to learn to better keep your data flat, you’ll probably be able to wear your sensor for MUCH longer than 10 days.
You would literally be throwing money away to do the subscription plan.
I honestly don’t know what pharmacies are like in Australia, but in the US, you seldom HAVE to pay retail price for pharmacy items if you’re a savvy shopper. We have membership wholesale clubs, like Sam’s Club, Costco, BJ’s, etc… Where you pay a premium for the right to stop there, but you can get bulk items at big discounts, and often other perks like big Pharmacy discounts. That’s how I get my supplies. It costs $100US fit my membership, but I save more than that on a single Dexcom refill. And honestly, we would have bought that membership anyway, even without using the prescription benefit. I can keep my total monthly cost to around that same $100US.
We also have pharmacy discount programs. They work sort of like a secondary form of insurance, basically giving you a better “copay” than the retail price, but they don’t cost anything. My state has one available for everyone in Colorado. Certain stores offer them to be used at their own pharmacies. There are generic ones we can find online, too. I’ve tried them, but I get a better price at that wholesale club I mentioned earlier.
Unfortunately, only the earliest versions of the G6 transmitter could have the battery changed and the internal clock reset. The hackers who make most of this possible for us haven’t cracked the new transmitter firmware. If your transmitter starts with an 8 followed by a letter (8G, 8H, 8J, etc…), you won’t able to use the transmitter beyond 110 days, or when the original battery dies, whichever comes first. If you get less than 90 days life, though, Dexcom will send you a free replacement.
The warranty replacements is another reason not to subscribe. Even if you wear a sensor for a week or so, but it stops working before 10 days, you get free replacements. Those few days off life you got out of a sensor or transmitter start to add up after a few months of use and you wind up with entirely free sessions.