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Cost of a prescription for drugs
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Prescriptions are dispensed at the pharmacy for £7.10 per item. Is it too much to pay or reflects the cost of the drug.
People ill from work are often on statutory sick pay and may be on several drugs prescribed by their GP. Some are known to skip meals to get the money together to pay for these. Then the NHS needs to be funded, not just by the State.
Is £7.10 too much to ask someone off sick to pay? Then what about those on long term drug treatment?
People ill from work are often on statutory sick pay and may be on several drugs prescribed by their GP. Some are known to skip meals to get the money together to pay for these. Then the NHS needs to be funded, not just by the State.
Is £7.10 too much to ask someone off sick to pay? Then what about those on long term drug treatment?
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I say do what Wales do, and don't charge at all.
And depending on what you're getting, it might be quite cheap - the more expensive items are subsidised by the cheaper ones.
Exactly, Wales has different priorities to England, but they do not have more money per person.
Plus if you are getting lots of scripts you can get a sort of season pass, so there really shouldnt be any need to spend £200 on items - although I think things like leg braces are exempt.
Except we Greek nationals have to pay for our meds, which cost up to 7 x cheaper than having to pay full whack, IKA's doctors are merely pen-pushers, writing out prescriptions all day long while doing actually very little by examining their patients. So if an European visitor can't get to see an IKA doctor then they have to pay, like us, the full cost of the medicine.
The majority I see pay IRO £7.10 for a prescription. Let's make that a med called Spiriva, a single capsule manufactured by Engleheim Bohringer, being administered via their (supplied) Handihaler to an asthmatic. It's a bronchial dilator, very effective over approximately 24 hours or so. Now, you would be expected to pay for that £7.10. But in Greece - I would have to pay full price. How much? 85 Euros for 28 days' supply. That is the cost I would be expected to pay if I didn't qualify for IKA and had to go private. If I had been ill and off work and had been paying my taxes, I would therefore qualify for reduced medicine bills but I tell you right now if I was sick, unwell and off work I wouldn?t qualify for free prescriptions if I got down on my knees and begged my government! And being ill as I have been in the past I did not whine, I did not grump and complain when I all I had to pay a tenner for that Spiriva. (10 Euros at current exchange rates is approximately £9.50) Yes, we Greeks have to pay even a small amount for our medicines like yourselves, but comparatively speaking we pay more pro-rata than you and can't do anything about it but pay. Through the nose.
You have, I discovered an NHS prepayment certificate? One in which you pre-pay e.g. for 3 months, 6 months or 1 year? Then you get to collect your meds for free. This works only, I believe, if you have more than a certain amount of meds every month. Well, I think these pre-payment certificates are wonderful! Brilliant! But WE don't have that luxury and pre-payment certificates, less face it, ARE a luxury. You lot are having it good only paying a fraction of your medicines' cost even though some of you are sick at the time, you still have to pay just the same as any other European in any other European country. Come on, stop whingeing, please. You just don't realise just how good you got it here!
Poppi
Many drugs cost a LOT more than that and so they have to be paid for somehow.
The fact is we already pay a fortune in taxes and get nothing in return. We're expected to pay more - the utterly disgraceful scrapping of the 10p tax band is merely one example of how we're ripped off - and get less. In England and Wales, an organisation called Nice condemns people to an early grave because they think certain drugs are too expensive to buy. GPs are paid massive salaries - many over £100k and some on as much as £250k a year - and they do less work than before. We have the shameful spectacle of the chief executive of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Trust being allowed to get away scot-free after a hospital infested with Clostridium difficile killed 90 people. If this had happened in a private company, the likes of Aladdin would have been here, screaming that charges of corporate manslaughter should be brought against Rose Gibb. But since this is the public sector, such rules of accountability do not apply. This shameless leach is suing her former employers in order to get a bigger severance payout. Oh, and she's launched a firm advising hospitals on how to be more efficient. You have to pity any moron which wants to take advice from that vacuous, pathetic woman.
No, prescription charges should be scrapped completely. There's more than enough money going into the NHS - what a shame it's being wasted on pointless initiatives and over-paid managers.
I don't pay more.
Also, if the NHS is struggling, and there is no money left in the pot for anything at the moment, how exactly will England's prescriptions be paid? Where does the money come from?
Time we stopped treating the NHS like a sacred cow and started asking serious questions about its future. The fact is, the population is getting older and the bills are going to add up. Unless such issues are debated and resolved now, the country will practically go bankrupt.
I will be quite entertained to see exactly how much of a mess it will be if they try and implement anything. Things are indeed in a mess, but no doubt it will end up costing billions to even think about restructuring.
Perhaps you should write them a letter spelling out exactly what needs doing, as you seem to think you're right on the money.
It is very easy for us to sit here and say what they should do, and how simple it may seem...
Pre payment certificate may work out cheaper?
There are some drugs that might be cheaper to buy otc.
Like what?
Why not? The NHS doesn't have unlimited pots of money.
For all the NHS's faults (of which, admittedly, there are many), you only have to look at a system like the US's to be thankful that we have it.
When i worked in a community pharmacy I counted the scripts one day and worked out that 1 in 11 people had actually paid for their prescription.
People that pay usually have 1 or 2 items on their script. People that dont pay sometimes have multiple pages worth. Some have so many drugs its a wonder how they are still alive, and none paid for.
Some medications can cost hundreds or even thousands of pounds PER person per WEEK.
So to get us out of the NHS doing too much we should scrap one of its sources of funding?
I've noticed SG that you are more than willing to rant and rave about the government (its too big, we're taxed too much etc.) but there is no substance - what parts of the NHS specifically should we cut?
My mum is entitled to free scripts but she still has to pay for certain items as they arn't covered.
Until June I went about half a year spending over $300 a month in prescriptions... 3 prescriptions, stopped taking one of my asthma medications cuz that was another $125 added to it. Birth control was $70, which I also stopped taking for several months because I couldn't afford to have my yearly vag check out and they wouldn't prescribe any more until then. 1/5 of my salary went to medicine... alot of people spend less of a proportion of their salary on a place to live.
Now even with the insurance discount, birth control costs me $50 a pack, asthma inhaler is $30, asthma pills are another $30 and my ssris are $60. Not to mention $25 a week to get that joy of insurance in the first place.
The boyfriends mom has just started a spankin new cancer treatment that costs somewhere over $20,000... (luckily his dad has good insurance and they don't pay anywhere near that) I'm sure her and anybody in her position, whether they even had a job or not or a penny to their name would shit bricks to pay 7 for it. As people have said before, prescriptions are expensive... whether $100 a month expensive or more than a car expensive... they need to be paid for somehow and asking for a miniscule amount... to save on your taxes... which then everybody would pay and I'm sure there would be an uproar about that... is nothing.
When the first talk of elections came out and healthcare was on the spot, every high paid, well healthinsured bastard said... well shit, I'm not paying to have fatty mcfatfat rasie my taxes. It is not my fault they can't get off their ass and go for a walk and exercise (says the overweight newsman) and I won't pay for it... cuz the only sick people in need of medication and medical attention are the heffers. Obviously. I don't even dare them to live a month without insurance to help dwindle the costs to a still extrodinate amount... just go a week... because the thought alone that an accident may happen and you can't afford a thousand dollar a day trip to the hospital is enough to drive anybody insane and give them at least one iota of sympathy.
My dad get his free as well, but it appears that everything is free for him.
Yup - I know Michael Mann is a bit of a pillock, but his Sick Note movie was just :eek: even if some of it was indeed slightly distorted.
A NHS for the US based on our model wouldnt work, the NHS is already the 3rd largest employer in the world, it would be nigh on impossible to put into place to cover all of the US.
But State run health services should be set up with the richer states subsidising the poorer ones, it wouldnt be ideal, but its very likely to be cheaper than everyone buying insurance.
I think that people don't realise how expensive drugs are in the first place.
Though as said, I have no ground to stand on in this debate.
Yup - I know it wouldn't work based on our model, but the fact that people can't get insurance, hence affordable treatment if they are already ill, and also get get treatment without insurance is just disgusting.
Where are you?
Ok
As long as there's some solutions for people that require a lot of drugs I think it's not unreasonable for people to pay a part of their drugs themselves. For most 'normal' people it doesn't amount to that much so there's no real need to basically give them away.