Prescription charges for the over sixties

effalump

I'm sure I read somewhere that prescriptions are free for all ages in Wales and Scotland, paid for by England.

Devolution! Not paid for by England!

all the home nations bar england get free prescriptions, free bus passes at 60. only some areas in england get free bus passes at 60. i have worked since i was 18, apart from a few years when my children were little, but went back to work when my youngest was 18 months. expected to retire at 60, then it went to 65 then within a few months at risen to 66, which for me is now next year. since turning 60 i have been on necessary medication which would cost me over £50 monthly. i still work part time and receive universal credit and would not necessarily receive help. they have said it will be a gradual increase if it goes through but at the moment seems as if its another attack on those born in the 1950's.

Germanshepherdsmum

Your last post was remarkably well-written for a dyslexic Yammy. I always thought dyslexia affected the spelling of words rather than the choice of them?

Dyslexia has many forms and can affect people in many ways mine, are spelling and Grammar so my choice of words is nor affected. I do use spell checks. I'm going to take what you say as a compliment.
This was meant to be about prescription charges and my first comment was perhaps they will bring in a kind of Means test where we all pay on a sliding scale according to our gross net income. I personally feel guilty about getting a winter fuel allowance.
As for the spelling of Stewart, all my relations spell it that way, not Stuart which was introduced by Mary queen of Scots who had been educated in France where there was no w. Until then it was spelt Stewart or Steward alluding to the job even in Scotland.

effalump if you have multiple medications you buy a prescription annual 'season ticket, approx £110 that covers all medication for a year.

effalump

I'm sure I read somewhere that prescriptions are free for all ages in Wales and Scotland, paid for by England.

effalump. You may have read that nonsense but every time on here someone corrects it saying something along the lines of Scots pay tax and from those taxes we receive a portion back which the Scottish parliament can spend according to their priorities. We choose to spend it on health and education, hence free prescriptions and free university tuition amongst other things.
England chooses to spend their allocation on ? who knows. If I was paying tax in England I would most certainly be investigating why the same distribution was not being used for the English, not reiterating lies as you have today.

Living in Scotland means all prescriptions and eye tests are free. I think it is high time any item that costs less than £5 was removed from the "free" list. There are very few people that can't find 20p for Paracetamol, Asprin, Ibruprophen etc

* Grannypiper* Surgeries where I live in NI won't prescribe OTC medication, and rightly so.

I live in wales where prescriptions are free. Both my parents take quite a lot of medication if they have to pay for prescriptions they would not have much money left at the end of the month to enjoy the rest of their lives whereby they have both worked since they were 14 and have never claimed any benefits.

Tina1957 I have said it before and I will repeat it again. I f you have a lot of medication, you buy a prescription annual 'season ticket' that costs £110 approx and that covers everything for a year. This equals just over £2 a week.

The GP I saw when I has shingles at not far off 70 must have been ahead of the curve - she told me I could buy the strong painkillers needed (not available off the shelf) without a prescription, and I had no objection to doing so.

I read somewhere that each prescription item costs around £7 just in admin, never mind the cost of the item, so prescribing things like paracetamol does seem daft when it’s so cheap to buy just about anywhere.

There were several mega-packs of paracetamol - literally hundreds of tablets - left over after the stockpiling friend I mentioned in a pp died. They were all chucked out, along with the rest of his hoard.
This was someone who left 2 houses owned outright and over £1m in cash. (I do know this, , since dh was the executor.)

Yes, I am well aware that a lot of pensioners are far from well off, but many are very comfortable, and to me it does seem wrong for those to get everything for free.

Witzend I'm not sure that's true. The recommended first line painkiller for shingles is paracetamol supplemented with codeine. The strongest codeine/paracetamol medication which can be bought without a prescription is 8mg/500mg, which is quite expensive and can only be bought for a limited time (10 days?).

Co-dydramol, which has 10mg of codeine is far more effective, but is only available with a prescription and is, incidentally, cheaper to the NHS than an individual could buy the weaker painkiller.

I'm a long-term user of painkillers and know the cost and availability when I've occasionally run out.

I also have aspirin on a repeat prescription, as do all people who have had a heart attack. Yes, I could afford to buy them, but I'd probably forget and this way the GP can make sure I order them every month.

nadateturbe I wish more G.Ps would do the same, there really is no need to be prescribing items that cost so little.

Well, maybe it wasn’t the strongest available, growstuff, but it was certainly co-something, without a prescription, and IIRC not to be taken for more than 3 consecutive days at a time.

I didn’t have shingles too badly, so it was more or less enough for me.

Witzend

Well, maybe it wasn’t the strongest available, growstuff, but it was certainly co-something, without a prescription, and IIRC not to be taken for more than 3 consecutive days at a time.

I didn’t have shingles too badly, so it was more or less enough for me.

Yes, that makes sense. I thought you would have needed to take it for longer. In that case, it most certainly would have been cheaper with a prescription (even if you'd paid full price for the prescription) and the 10mg/500mg version is more effective but isn't available without a prescription.

British state pensions are the lowest in northern europe, free presciptions, bus passes and the like go someway towards narrowing the gap.

British state pensions can't be compared with others in northern Europe because people in other countries don't generally have separate occupational pensions or Pension Credit. They also pay for healthcare until they die and it's the norm to pay rent as a pensioner. They also contribute more in the first place.

I've seen it stated so many times that British pensions are the lowest in Europe, but it's not really true. It is true that British pensioners are, as an age group, the least likely to be suffering from poverty of all other age groups in the UK.

growstuff - what do you think would be a fair pension system, and how would you phase it in to be fair to those who are now too old to join a new scheme?

I cannot answer for growstuff, but I would like to see all the extra add-ons we get: free prescriptions, winter fuel allowances, bus passes etc, just monetised and paid to us as an increased pension. This should be accompanied by a similar rise in Pension credit levels.

I think it is treating us like children to think we cannot plan and budget our money without lots of little ring-fenced amounts to make sure we take our medicine and keep warm. Other benefits, like bus passes benefit well-off pensioners in urban areas with lots of buses, but do not benefit poorer pensioners in rural areas without buses.

If we were seen to be paying our way for everything, it would mitigate the prevalent belief that those over pension age are a drag on the economy, net takers and not contributors, which we actually are.

Bus companies would soon introduce Senior Bus Cards for older people like the rail card and all those other pensioner benefits that commercial organisations like restaurants, hairdressers and the like offer, to attract our business at quiet times of the week or day.

nadateturbe

Doodledog I'm not sure how the system operates as I live in NI, but I was under the impression that if you were of working age and not claiming benefits you had to pay for prescriptions.
It just seems logical that if people are paying it should be all those working and not just under 60s. And stop paying when you retire.
Kali yes often £9 is very little compared to the actual cost, but it's still a lot of money for many people. Much too high imo. And there are times when the actual cost is less than £9.

£9 can be very little but sometimes it is alot more than the med would cost over the counter, my pharmacist will tell you if you can buy it cheaper. My dentist has given my DH a private prescription for an antibiotic instead of an NHS one as it cost less than £9.

growstuff

Witzend I'm not sure that's true. The recommended first line painkiller for shingles is paracetamol supplemented with codeine. The strongest codeine/paracetamol medication which can be bought without a prescription is 8mg/500mg, which is quite expensive and can only be bought for a limited time (10 days?).

Co-dydramol, which has 10mg of codeine is far more effective, but is only available with a prescription and is, incidentally, cheaper to the NHS than an individual could buy the weaker painkiller.

I'm a long-term user of painkillers and know the cost and availability when I've occasionally run out.

I also have aspirin on a repeat prescription, as do all people who have had a heart attack. Yes, I could afford to buy them, but I'd probably forget and this way the GP can make sure I order them every month.

I had amitriptyline for shingles pain.

I agree with you MOnica, so I won't repeat it.

I also agree, M0nica, and feel that it might also stop some of the judgemental nonsense about people being 'able to afford' whatever add-ons are under discussion.

That way of thinking is (apart from being incredibly subjective) punitive to older people, and assumes that there is some sort of baseline that pensioners should subsist on, with anything above that being a luxury that they should not be given unless they would otherwise fall below the subsistence level.

I dare say that most people 'could afford' to pay for all of the add-ons (depending on how 'can afford' is defined), but many would have to give up other important things in order to do so, such as giving up visiting grandchildren in order to 'afford' a TV licence, or not having an occasional lunch with a friend in order to 'afford' prescriptions.

It seems to me so petty, if not spiteful, to expect older people to have to make these choices at a time in their lives when they should be able to relax after a lifetime of working and looking after others. Who is to say what other people can afford? It's so subjective.

Also, pensioners don't live their lives 'as a group'. They are individuals. If we really must divide the population into groups for purposes of comparison, I'd like to see the median and mode averages for pensioner 'wealth', rather than the mean ones.

The mean average that includes people like (eg) Stanley Johnson at one end, and and people on a basic pension at the other is going to suggest that the average income of pensioners is a lot higher than it actually is. A mode average would be a better way of presenting the figures. Which type of average is being used is is rarely made clear in newspaper reports, and it makes a huge difference to the results.

In any case, I don't like they way 'ordinary people' are turned against one another in this way - it's not a race to the bottom. If working age people are not getting enough benefits, we need to put that right, not begrudge pensioners free prescriptions, and if some pensioners 'can afford' to pay for things like prescriptions and TV licences, why not be pleased about that, rather than look for ways to drag them down?

Doodledog The pension income of Stanley Johnson and his ilk will make little difference to the average income of pensioners because there are, relatively, so few of them compared with the millions with only state pension or state pension and a bit more.

However the following set of government statistics www.gov.uk/government/statistics/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2019-to-2020/pensioners-incomes-series-financial-year-2019-to-2020#distribution-of-pensioners-incomes gives you an enormous amount of information about pensioner incomes.

I did see a median figure somewhere, but I cannot retrace the source but the median figure was quite close to the average, within a £ or two.

It's the mode average (I think) that is the most useful - the one with the figure that applies to most people. The mean and median are easily skewed by extremes on either side.

The way stats like this are presented is deliberate, I think; and as far as I can tell is very seldom questioned. I suspect that a lot of people become convinced of inaccurate figures (eg the average household income) and are prepared to vote in accordance with them, without stopping to ask what they mean.

I'll have a closer look at your link when I can, M0nica, thanks. I am working today, and can only pop in and out when I take a quick break.

Doodledog The median is the middle value where half the sample group are higher than it and half lower.

Looking at the distribution of pensioners incomes, the mode, the figure that occurs most frequently, doesn't really work with a distribution like pensions where over a range of values the numbers are fairly flat and you could end up with several modal figures.

The median has half those drawing pension one side and half the other, so that is probably the best value.

I always think the average in so many cases is a totally useless statistic.