Affordability drives prescription charge exemptions
No research has been done on whether prescription charges hinder
treatment |
Government policy on who should be exempt from prescription charges is driven by patients' ability to pay and not the conditions from which they suffer.
This was made clear to the House of Commons Health Committee at the end
of January by Felicity Harvey, head of the Department of Health’s
medicines, pharmacy and industry group. Dr
Harvey was giving evidence to the committee’s inquiry into NHS charges.
She told the committee that there were no plans to review the current
disease-based exemption categories.
Dr Harvey added that recent reviews of charge exemptions had been based
on prescription costs, affordability and the NHS Low Income Scheme and
that these were not currently under review either.
At a separate evidence session last week (PJ, 4 February, p125 and 128),
Ellen
Schafheutle, research fellow in the drug usage and pharmacy practice
group, University of Manchester, who has examined prescription charges
internationally (PJ, 8 March 2003, p336 PDF (50K)), said that no research
had been done in the UK on whether patients who could not afford to have
prescriptions
dispensed then cost the NHS more in further treatment.
Howard Stoate (Lab, Dartford) said that it was important to know that
figure because if it was £450m or more a year it would wipe out
the £450m that was raised from prescription charges.
During the same evidence session, Rob Darracott, director of corporate
and strategic development, Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said that it
favoured a system of monthly payments for prescription charge prepayment
certificates. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal
Acrobat
Reader