Confirmed flu A, but doctor said medicine is expensive so did not give me script
Just did the research, $40.99 at Chemist Warehouse
Am I on the correct medicine link?
Flu - Doctor Said Medicine Is Expensive
jjj123 on 21/07/2025 - 16:48
Last edited 21/07/2025 - 19:10 by 1 other user
Last edited 21/07/2025 - 19:10 by 1 other user
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Doctor: nah sorry whirlpool forum users only
Bro OzBargain members also make 200k+ minimum.
in that case, r/ausfinance users only, minimum 1 mill in super / or at least 3 negative geared investment property
@Jimothy Wongingtons: I'm too scared to go to r/ausfinance. Totally out of my tax bracket. :( One day!
Spend 200k through OzB minimum **
it is not a cure
There’s no medicine for flu. Unless something changed in last few days. Which meds do you take for flu?
Tamiflu is specifically for flu.
correct - Oseltamivir, it is an antiviral
It is only partially effective, must be used in first 48 hours to be most effective, and it is a policy which GPs follow that it is not worth the cost/risk benefit for general use by otherwise healthy people across the board unless you are in a higher risk category due to age or other conditions
Tamiflu is specifically for flu
Prolly why they included the word "flu" in the name…
@Muppet Detector: I’m No doctor so I don’t know. This is first I heard of this meds. Seems placebo to me. Flu will go away in few days for most anyway. So not sure how to test it for me personally but I am glad such a meds exists
@unhuman: it's not placebo. It binds to a viral enzyme called neuraminidase which binds to cell surface glycoproteins as part of the infection process.
You know how flu viruses are called H1N1, H5N1 etc? The N is neuraminidase and the number is a subtype. The H is hemagglutinin, which is a glycoprotein found on the virus surface also important to the cell infection process.
But yes, most people will get better without it.
@unhuman: Lol, wait till you get full blown influenza that knocks you on your arse for a week.
I got absolutely wrecked by it, meanwhile wifey got tamiflu on day 1 of her illness (at that point I was 2 days in - sick as a dog) and she recovered in a sum total of 3 days. I'd pay $40 ten times over for Tamiflu to cut the illness short.
@ThadtheChad: Agree, had it full blown twice, lost 20kgs with the more recent one (2 full weeks I was out). $40, yes please I'll take it.
@connorlo: Jesus that sounds rough, but understandable. Even after a week, I was weak and slowly getting to get back on my feet.
Now with a toddler thrown into the mix, there would be no way I'd endure that. The cost/risk equation can climb a cactus, jab me tf up!
@shoppe: Lol, I am a man and yes I got influenza A. Trivalise it all you want, it was rough af (and this is coming from someone who had a compound fracture where my snapped bone was sticking out of my skin).
@ThadtheChad: And by "full blown flu" you mean most of the time when people say they have "the flu" they don't have the flu at all. Full blown flu being when they actually have the flu…
@unhuman: Influenza A has a typical symptomatic time of 7-10 days. There can be fatigue and cough that lasts up to 3-4 weeks.
Some milder forms of the flu are easily distinguished from the common cold due to lasting 5-7 days rather than a common cold lasting 2-3 days typically.
IANAD (I am not a doctor).
doctor said medicine is expensive
It is.
But wait a minute..
OP asked….."Am I on the correct medicine link?"
How do we know?
Surely OP should ask thier doctor this question.
Oseltamivir phosphate only shortens flu by a day and it only works best if taken within two days of symptoms appearing. Just take an extra sick day and play Bananaza.
Can confirm.
Source: I'm a pharmacist
i would gladly pay $41 + GP cost to cut short flu by a day. Hell, I'd pay it to cut it short 2 hours
username does NOT checkout
Actually it does, time is money and my life, that is what you have to be frugal with - I get paid to deliver outcomes and my 2 hours are worth more than the ~$80 this would cost me.
I tried to work sick in the last fortnight and the mistakes I could have made on document reviews with headache fog (if I did not give up and re-read it later to find them when better) could have cost my company many tens of thousands. If I lose the deal because of lost time, it could be hundreds of thousands or millions.@MrFrugalSpend: Also there is the whole quality of life aspect. Being out of commission for an entire day (oftentimes its actually more than that), is easily worth more than $40 especially for an adult.
@ThadtheChad: It’s not like you’re out there fighting for the infinity gems or anything though is it? If you have sick days it makes sense to use them when you’re sick.
@MrFrugalSpend: I hope you have income protection insurance because people get randomly sick all the time from things much worse than flu, for much longer. Tamiflu doesn't shorten the duration for everyone. Its main utility is in preventing people who are at high risk of dying from the flu, from dying from the flu. It takes them (when it works) from dead, to just really sick for weeks.
It may shorten the duration of the flu in a well person by a day but it just as likely wont. Since COVID peoples expectations around being ill have really changed and not for the better. In what dystopian universe are we now prioritising our jobs over our own health? I tell most people that influenza-A takes a good two weeks to fully recover from. If your entire existence is conflated with earnings, then you're in for a monster shock when you get proper ill. And that's not if, that's when, because everyone does at some point, in some way.
What you and everyone else needs to be doing is to get sick pay to cover you, and to allow yourselves to rest fully, not constantly trying to grind harder like a work drone. You're not. You're a human who gets to rest when they get sick and if your self worth is tied up in hours worked, your self esteem is up for destruction at some stage.
/rant
(hospital doctor here)
This is why we have prescription medication - the practitioner decides whether it is appropriate to prescribe or not.
The issue is that antivirals are very difficult to come by and introducing resistance is a bad public health outcome.
Widespread use of Tamiflu will only lead to more resistant strains, increasing the risk of potential outbreak and limiting our options to address.
The other issue is that you need to take it very early for there to be any meaningful clinical effects. If you're only going to the doctor when you're already exhibiting quite strong symptoms, you're already past that window.
Seems odd?
$40.99
It is.
Those Cents makes odds. Cheers.
Actually only integers can be classified as either odd or even. Decimals aren't considered odd or even because they aren't divisible by 2 to produce another whole number.
So we'd have to presume it is first rounded to $41 neat to be considered odd (however as I no longer pay using cash and especially as the government is in the process of cutting out surcharges, I'd likely pay $40.99).
plus rounded up
If you consider the "decimal" in a currency value as an integer number of cents $40.99 (4099c) is odd as dividing by two produces half a cent (2049.5c)
$41.00 is even as half of this would be $20.50 (2050c)
The pharmacy round it up. They take 1c here and there, soon they will have 1 dollar
ask for 1¢ to be refunded to your card 😂
You laugh but, when I was working hospitality, and the card fees were just being introduced, I genuinely had someone demand she get her $0.02 back.
She got her $0.02 back
… then they take that dollar to the dollar store… IYKYK :D
Anti virals make a huge difference to impact of disease.
…
Which is it? Huge difference or 1 day less if taken under ideal conditions?
Cant speak for Tamiflu, wasnt available to me. I think I had Marboxil?
Have had Influenza twice in my life.
Once left me bedridden for 3 months with after effects lasting over 6.
The other, the Dr gave me anti virals and I was in bed for less than a week. It was bad cold territory, not bad flu.
Was given anti virals to combat Covid. Equally less than a week.
As an asthmatic, anti virals are life savers.
Some possibilities:
- Two different strains of flu?
- The first prepped your immune system to recognise and attack the second?
- You were healthier when acquiring the second one?
- Covid was relatively benign for the overwhelming majority of people including for my very elderly grandparents.
Do I really need to explain why three anecdotes about three different illnesses and three different treatment protocols in the one subject across some undefined time period isn't especially scientific?
@tenpercent: It makes a difference to vulnerable people who need it as their immune system needs the help to fight it. That's why it exists. No need to be so cynical of their lived experience. Although I agree it is hardly scientific nor meaningful statistic with various factors at play. It also does not mean it isn't true, just that it in itself is no proof of such.
As an asthmatic, anti virals are life savers.
Not everyone is asthmatic and most people get over the flu in a couple of days.
@jv: Not everyone has parkinson's disease (… but we still fund the treatments required to help them live as normal a life as possible)
Most babies get over whooping cough in a couple of days (but etc…)
@mingofmongo: Because most people don't get over parkinson's diseases after a couple of days in bed.
@jv: No, and some asthmatics may take weeks or months to get over influenza A.
It's almost like the "most people don't" argument isn't the same as "everyone doesn't "
No, and some asthmatics may take weeks or months to get over influenza A.
Perhaps, but most people get over it in a couple of days.
Have had Influenza twice in my life. Once left me bedridden for 3 months with after effects lasting over 6. The other, the Dr gave me anti virals and I was in bed for less than a week. It was bad cold territory, not bad flu.
This makes no sense to me - unless you basically don't go outside or have any contact with other humans over the winter, there's very little chance that any adult would have only had the flu twice in their life.
The symptoms of the flu can be anything anywhere from completely asymptomatic, to the sniffles, to like a regular cold, a bad cold, knocked out for a few days, or (in very, very rare circumstances) knocked out for longer than that.
What's most likely the case is that you've had the flu many, many times, with the vast majority of those times being asymptomatic to mildly symptomatic. You probably never noticed it, or just assumed it was a common cold, and you've only had a "bad" flu twice, once where you were knocked out for 3 months, then the next time, you were adamant you needed antivirals, and you were out for a week.
@p1 ama: When you have full blown influenza, its definitely a week-long affair if not longer.
I've had it about 4-5 times in my entire life and its fking ghastly. Spewing from both ends, can't keep anything down, cycles of high fever, night sweats, chills, body aches, brain fog … What really takes the cake is that on occasion you can contract secondary bacterial infections due to a weakened immune system, which happened to me at the end of a bout of influenza A. Fking nasty shit that it was, upper respiratory tract infection that took a course of doxycycline to clear up.
Why we acting like a day less of the flu is not a huge difference lol. For $40.99, I'll take my extra day not feeling like death.
It won’t make much difference to most people.
@jv: Neither does Panadol, and it's a household staple for all sort of ailments, (including those with worse efficacy than tamiflu.)
But this can give you maybe half a day of relief from flu for $40.99, (and the generic is only $20.) To each their own, that it would be a bargain to me.
I've heard this as well, doctors saying the medicine is "expensive" and not prescribing it.
I'd pay $500 on the spot if it could shave 1 day off being sick!
what about ivermectin will that work?
I miss the days when people didn't treat every single sniffle like the Black Death.
Or bleach, maybe?
UV light up the ass
Or not
Less than a decade ago doctors told patients to rest up and maintain adequate hydration. They also didn't even dare to waste limited Medicare resources on testing if you had a cold or if you had a flu or what particular strain of flu because in almost all cases it makes absolutely no difference to the prognosis or the recommended treatment (bed rest and maintain adequate hydration, come back if you are not feeling any better in 7 days).
A decade ago we didn't have every single talking head and government putting out wall to wall messaging that the sniffles would kill you.
you didn't know medicine is expensive??
Just go to your local Bunnings and buy a bag of concrete mate.
More likely will go to work and give everyone else the flu.This is how we roll these days. Also did you (OP) get vaccinated for the latest flu strains?
Society does love a wage slave
Maybe OP is male and he has man flu
OP, sorry that your crook, hopefully you'll begin to start feeling a lot better soon.
In the meantime, no breathing or sneezing on others, keep your hands to yourself and wash your them frequently.
and wash your them frequently
Who are you to be telling people to wash their them?
Pronouns are confusing these days. Always a potential landmine.
BOOM!
As are contractions.
'gland mine'
There is a generic Tamiflu for less than half the price. You don't need to buy the Tamiflu brand, while it might be branded the active ingredient is the same — oseltamivir
https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/143335/oseltamivir-l…
Research has shown that Tamiflu is not that effective in shortening the duration of flu — most of literature I read online says it's reduced by at most by 1 day, but for children. For adults it's less than a day.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279458/#:~:text=They%2….Also, note: Oseltamivir needs to be taken within 48 hours after the flu symptoms start. It will not have any effect on the course of the flu if you take it later than that.
That sounds like the kind of miracle drug that should be put on the PBS and made available to every Tom, Dick and Rajesh who walks into a GP's office with the sniffles.
/s
Actually sounds like a good idea. So doctors can start giving this to idiots who demand antibiotics. Both don't work but at least this won't further develop antibiotic resistant strains
Doctors shouldn't be prescribing antibiotics willy nilly either.
@Tech5: They should be allowed to prescribe Placebocillin for hypochondriacs, or better still a teaspoon of concrete for themselves.
Heaps at aged care and free. And not generic.
If you are over 90YO, just look out for plod carrying a TASER, when you go there to score.
Doctor is sick of big pharma charging an arm and a leg for medicine
Big pharma now = Trump (PBS attack)
I'm out of the loop on this one / didn't understand it when I looked it up.
Isn't PBS == our government / taxpayers are subsidizing medicine?
Why would Trump/America care about this? Don't they still get paid the same?
ie, if I'm selling something on Gumtree, it doesn't affect me if the buyer is on centrelink?No, Trump (sex offending felon ) wants to penalise us via tariffs on pharmacy and blood products. He doesn't want us stepping on the big pharma toes of America, and has openly said he wants consumers to pay full price for medicines. Including cancer treatments.
The doctor forbid you from a cure because $40.99 is too expensive?