It’s time for people to re-evaluate what meds they actually need…Some doctors will prescribe lots of meds and forget about you until something happens. We have become a nation of ‘pill poppers’ and it’s getting worse when you factor in all the new vaccinations you must have to save everyone else’s life.
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The NHS doesn’t give a toss about spending anyway, if it needs more money it just gets it regardless of the reckless spending and stupid decisions (such as employing diversity and inclusion officers on 60K a year).
Its a model that isn’t sustainable and it needs binning and completely reforming.
I could tell you some real horror stories about wasting tax payers money in the NHS.
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Prescription costs go towards covering the costs of the prescriptions dispensed. Some despensed medications cost less than the current cost of a prescription, which is £9.35. But most dispensed medication costs much more than the £9.35 cost.
Viagra, costs the NHS, around £4-£5 per 4 tablets, but the cost to the public for over the counter Prozac is about £20. So the cost to the NHS for prescribed medication is normally less than the commercial value of it, due to the NHS’s purchasing ability. Which again helps to save money & reduce the power of the pharmaceutical companies.
It also has to be pointed out that many private companies involved in supplying NHS services do not pay a fair share of tax. For example Boots, who make money from dispensing prescriptions avoid paying so much tax, that if they paid their fair share of tax, every other year. Then every prescription issued by the NHS could be free.
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The waste in the NHS (in terms of cost) is because of the people running it. Its not boots not paying enough tax or anything else, its because people who run the NHS are incompetent idiots and they don’t give a shit about budgets. They have a culture of spend spend spend and the ask for more, which they get for political reasons.
The whole sorry prescription charge debacle should be thrashed out and levelled to be the same right across our group of four nations, or in other words, make it free for everyone and funded by a life’s time of NI contributions.
This could be a good thing to pick up on for English MP’s when the next general election falls due 
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Prescriptions are not free they are funded by the tax payer.
If it were up to me I would try to make Britain more healthy in the first place by educating kids properly about food, drugs, alcohol etc and teaching them about nutrition, cooking etc. We need to bring back school playing fields and have proper competitive sports and PE.
Cheap crap like McDonalds, KFC etc should have a tax burden applied and also applied to junk food sold in supermarkets. Then subsidise fruit and veg - even provide it free in schools. Improve school meals as well - build a culture of food appreciation based on health and fitness.
Just doing that would reduce the burden on the NHS through lowering diabetes and obesity cases.
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Boots is not a UK-based company. Prior to 2007, it was owned by Alliance Pharmaceutical (US company) but in 2007, this was bought by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Stefano Pessina, which is Swiss-based. Therefore, most of any taxes due would be paid in Switzerland.
I can tell you that in America your age doesn’t matter. Your insurance does. Government funded insurance for the elderly or Medicare doesn’t cover prescriptions for those to be covered you have to add plan B to your Medicare and they charge you to add it, even then you still have to pay. It might only be $2 or $3 per prescription provided it’s covered.
When I was doing Disaster Relief after Katrina. My target population was the elderly. I saw people in their 80s and 90s with prescription bills that totaled more than their income. It’s a shame, and it’s a mess. Health care in America especially long term health care is a scary thought.
Wasn’t Obama trying to do something about the cost of health care Danny?
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He was, however one of the first things Trump did was to ruin so called “Obama care”. American Healthcare is an industry and like all industries it is money driven. Unfortunately, those who are vulnerable financially are sometimes left wanting due to factors like do I eat or go get that medication.
America will never have an NHS, because too many people are getting rich.
Sorry to hear that Danny, it sounded like a good idea when I heard it.
Not one of Trumps better decisions…
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So could I, Bread, I worked for them for 33 years!
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Me too.
The hospital where I last worked in the UK enjoyed being under the supervision and control of a District Health Authority, an Area Health Authority and a Regional Health Authority.
I confess that I never understood the purpose of these three august bodies, though I’m confident that there would have been a measure of duplication involved consuming a great deal of the money assigned to them.
Although the organisations have now changed and the new term ‘trusts’ has been coined, I can’t imagine that the number of administrators, pen pushers, paper shufflers and their attendant meetings has diminished.
That is how bureaucracies work.
Shame about the ongoing lack of clinicians.
But Boots does earn it’s money in the UK & thus should pay UK tax on what it earns within the UK. We don’t welcome people who come to the UK to steal from shops (shoplift.) So why should we welcome businesses who come to the UK to steal from our tax system & thus damage our NHS etc? Theft is theft & it should be no less tolerated when it is done by foreign businesses, than our own citizens.
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I agree but that’s not how it works with international companies. For a start, the UK arm of the company will have to pay for the use of the Boots logo, etc reducing the final UK tax bill by an enormous amount. Then there’s the financing of the purchase of the company from the American company. Any loans taken out will be loaded onto the Boots in the UK and, thus, any interest payments will have to be made, again reducing any profits and, therefore the tax bill. I haven’t checked but it wouldn’t surprise me if Boots UK didn’t just about break even and so have no tax bill to pay in the UK other than business rates. That’s the commercial (shops) side.
As for the pharma side, most, if not all, R&D costs can be offset against any profits made so, again, it is unlikely any tax is due.
Exactly, these companies operate within the UK & use some very grubby, but legal, methods of not paying UK tax. But they still expect the UK tax funded police to help them prosecute those who steal from them. but they steal from our services, such as the Police & the NHS.
The fact that these companies use legal methods to not operate in an ethic manner within the UK, does not make them legitimate or companies we should respect. It simply shows them to be abusers.
To some, perhaps. To them, they are simply tax avoiders. This practice has been going on for donkeys and I can’t see an end to it because these companies employ some very, very intelligent and gifted accountants and tax lawyers.
Lawyers & accountants, no matter how good have no real impact on the law. However, the fact many of these companies have politicians in their pockets does.
Teresa May gave an election promise that she intended to stop tax avoidence & then did not. And I am sure the fact that her husband is employed by a company that advises on how not to pay tax, had absolutely no part to play in her breaking that election promise.
Tax avoidance could largely be stopped within months, if politicians cared about it.
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No, I don’t think the age limits for free prescriptions should be raised - the Government should be moving towards equality across all countries of the UK instead of making the differences greater.
I think there’s something wrong with the funding system that allows all the devolved governments of the countries in UK to give all their citizens free medication while only citizens in England have to pay, unless they are in an exempt class.
I don’t wish to sound mean but it doesn’t seem fair to me - and while I’m on, isn’t it time the Barnett Formula was re-jigged a bit to make it fairer for poorer regions in England?
I understand that some areas in parts of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland may need a bit of extra funding but you have to wonder how their govts can afford to fund more social welfare measures (prescriptions, personal healthcare, student tuition) than the English Government offer their citizens - or maybe the devolved governments’ priorities are different?
I completely agree.
I have never been happy that the Scots and Welsh have had free prescriptions, yet the North of England has been ignored.
I can only assume that, in common with many other people in the South of England, the North is a bit of a mystery, and that many of them are even unaware of the North! In any event, I’m sure they are unaware that there is a greater proportion of poorer people in the North than in the South.
By all means have free prescriptions for the Scots and the Welsh, but offer the same to us Northerners.