Prescription charges for the over sixties

I think the reasoning behind over 60's not paying may have been that they are (were) the age group where things start breaking down and needing more attention (and drugs) from GP's etc, just at the time when they no longer have a salary, and, of course they would have paid into the NI system for all their working lives, and if really lucky, may not have needed much in the way of healthcare ... until they get older!

I've been taking thyroxine for many years so hard to remember now but looking back it made a tremendous difference. I had got to the stage where I had to recline the car seat and rest after a day at work before I could drive home (15 minute journey) so just feeling normal at the end of the day, drive home and have the energy to do things with the children, cook a meal etc was a revelation.

those taking thyroxine, did you notice an improvement in your energy levels once taking it
i mean what are the pros and cons for someone whose natural levels are borderline.

When my GP told me I had an underactive thyroid he said, "The good news is you will never have to pay for a prescription again, the bad news is you are on medication for the rest of your life." Bit like a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down.

Some of us may be taking thyroxine. If so, prescriptions are free ("the silver lining" as my funny GP commented). Maybe other conditions which offer passported free prescriptions?

The logic of it is questionable. For most people the Carers Allowance is only a a fraction (and a very small one) of what they would earn if they could work.

Since it is a mere token payment, there is very little reason for not continuing to pay it after retirement.

However, the Pension Credit level for households where someone is receiving a disability benefit is raised, so poorer pensioner households can recoup the carers allowance through thaty means. If you lose your Carers Allowance through receiving State Pension, it i only the money you lose not the entitlement other easpects of it and I think if someone is a Carer, whether on pension or not, pension credit is increased

I quote from the government site

If someone gets Attendance Allowance or the middle or highest rate care component of DLA, PIP or AFIP, they may be entitled to extra Pension Credit of £67.30

If someone gets Carer’s Allowance they may be entitled to extra Pension Credit of £37.70. They may also get this extra Pension Credit if they are entitled to Carer’s Allowance but they are not being paid it, or being paid it at a lower amount than normal, because they are being paid a higher amount by another, income-maintenance benefit such as State Pension (this is called underlying entitlement).
Extra Pension Credit for severely disabled people or carers
www.gov.uk/government/publications/pension-credit-toolkit/pension-credit-and-help-for-disabled-people

As I understand it, if your post retirement income is low what you lose on the swings, you more than win on the roundabouts

Thank you Monica. I agree with you Doodledog. It seems that a person who continues to care for someone else is still expected to do that, but once on a pension, and probably losing much of their retirement due to caring responsibilities, gets no financial benefit at all. Meanwhile I know of at least one person who claimed the Carer’s Allowance whilst still working part time, and once on a pension, passed over the claim for the allowance to her husband, who was not on a pension.
I care for my elderly mum but have never even tried to claim any allowance, because with our help and support, and one care visit a day, she manages with our daily visits and our support with all her ‘affairs’ which she couldn’t manage on her own. She’s currently in hospital after her third fall in the last six months, and will be going into an NHS care home for convalescence when she leaves hospital. She will finally leave there and return to her sheltered apartment. Nonetheless the care we provide takes up a great deal of our time, and has to be passed to our son and his wife when/if we go on holiday. I don’t want to be paid for caring for my mum, but some people may just be on a State Pension with no other income, and yet be unable to claim the Carer’s Allowance.

I see the logic, but a more compassionate way of looking at it would be that the carer’s allowance should be there to compensate for the retirement a career expected but cannot have.

The reason maddyone is that they are considered overlapping benefits. Carers Allowance is for people of working age who cannot work because they are carers and is meant, to a limited extent to replace the money they could have earned if they were not caring. Once you reach state retirement age, you receive your pension because you are no longer of working age, so the pension provides you with an income, regardless of whether you are working or not, so you will no longer qualify for a benefit that is there to compensate people expected to work who cannot.

I know the Carer’s Allowance is removed once a person claims their State Pension, but does anyone know why? What’s the reasoning behind that?

Hellsbelles

I am 60 and a carer for my husband who is the same age, he is unable to work , likewise myself as I have to care for him. We are in the lucky position of having paid off our mortgage ( basically by going without foreign holidays , new cars etc when we were working ) He gets basic PIP , and ESA and I carers allowance. That is it as we do have over the threshold in savings . We live off what we receive . One of the plus points of reaching 60 was free prescriptions . I already feel robbed of not getting a bus pass / pension until I'm 67

And you’ll feel even more robbed when you get your state pension as your Carer’s Allowance will be removed at the same time. ☹️

The median is the middle value where half the sample group are higher than it and half lower. I know the median and mean averages well, but am dredging up memories of mode averages from O level Maths, which was longer ago than I care to remember ?.

Thinking about it, I see what you mean about mode average potentially having several equal 'scores', though, so yes - the median would be more accurate, but even then, it wouldn't necessarily show where most people actually sit, which is why a lot of statements about how 'boomers' are so well off are meaningless.

In any case, the document you linked gave information for quintiles, so it's possible to see the statistics for different segments of the population.

I agree with you MOnica about the word "average". It has to be one of the most manipulated and misunderstood words in the English language.

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.

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 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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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