What do the Labour party need to do to stop their slow death?

[flashbac]

I'll start:

Starmer needs to stop acting like a rabbit in the headlights and actually stand for something. He has no charisma or gravitas. We want someone with a personality. Stand for something Starmer!

Stop pandering to the 'red wall'. Inspire people to vote for the party with some good policies instead of flip flopping about.

Have some inspiring and uplifting policies like:

• Free childcare for working parents
• making public transport normal and affordable
• subsidised green energy initiatives to help householders lower energy bills eg solar panels etc

And they NEED to distance themselves from that anti science TWAW stance. I'm all for being kind but a blanket dilution of what 'woman' means is regressive.

GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER

Last time I looked prescriptions weren’t free and I don’t see how paying for something you didn’t order is going to stop drs insisting that the pharmacist prescribes these extra medications that you hand back to the pharmacist in the chemist and they throw in the bin

Read my posts about the insistence that Dh has these medications.

Are you sure your friend hasn’t just given up arguing with drs and just takes the things as it is too exhausting to fight with these people any more

I check my items before I leave the pharmacy. I am always careful to order only what I need, via the offficial repeat request email, but so many times there will be additional items that have been discontinued months ago. I get the impression that hospital letters are not read and medication is not updated. I can see my records on line and there are still items on there that were stopped by the hospital over a year ago. I don't know what the process is in the surgery.
The pharmacy won't take the drugs back once they have been dispensed. It is such a waste.

Sounds like it's a hospital issue. In my experience with my dad's cancer treatment and continuing care communication between GPs and hospitals/consultant care is terrible and can create delays in treatment and confusion and conflicting approaches.

When I talk of prescriptions I'm talking about GP prescribed and managed medications. On that front it has been really tightened up.

You have to have a review every 6 months even with lifelong conditions and you can't get your 7th prescription without it. They never prescribe more than 28days supply and, at my GPs pre-covid there were signs up saying we no longer prescribe or give appointments for conditions x, y and z as you can see your pharmacist and buy over the counter. It was things like paracetamol, treatment for fungal nail infections, conjunctivitis etc.

If you're being treated for cancer my advice is go through macmillan who are great at sorting things out whereas trying to get to speak to consultants or get them to action anything yourself is ridiculously hard work.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER Re the wasted drugs pps have referred to, as in endless repeat prescriptions that aren’t needed and never used, IMO the answer is to make everybody pay something for prescriptions.

No, the answer is for the GP surgery and/or hospital not to prescribe the meds you've not asked for and don't need, in the first place!

My OH has a cupboard full of drugs that he's not asked for - they're a treatment "regimen" for cancer and include anti-diarrhoea, anti sickness, which are automatically prescribed every month by the oncologist. He's told them he doesn't need them, but apparently "it's cheaper" to continue prescribing them than their time would "cost" to change the prescription.

And they're only the cheap drugs. He's also got a couple of boxes of chemotherapy drugs, one being over £100 per table and the other being £300 per tablet - that's over £7k of tablets. That's because the consultant changed their mind as to the strength of the chemotherapy a few days after he'd picked up that month's prescription and had started taking them. The following week, because of the change in strength, he got another full sack of drugs, not only the expensive chemo ones, but all the others, yet again, i.e. anti sickness, etc.

The staff issuing the prescriptions have no interest in the cost.

@TheHoneyBadgerIf you're being treated for cancer my advice is go through macmillan who are great at sorting things out whereas trying to get to speak to consultants or get them to action anything yourself is ridiculously hard work.

I agree about how hard it is to deal with the oncologist and the oncology dept, even worse when you end up in that "Bermuda Triangle" when the oncologist tells you to go to the GP for a side effect and then the GP won't deal with it and fobs you off back to the oncologist. Unfortunately, MacMillan nurses aren't really active in our area expect for palliative care.

Yes user! That's exactly the kind of rubbish my dad's had to deal with ie. the Bermuda Triangle. His GP would refuse to do anything about even totally unconnected health issues because he was under the care of the hospital. Consultant would tell him GP would do x monitoring then GP would say no you need to see them etc. Luckily Macmillan very good here.

Kind of criminal to think of such expensive drugs going to waste - people in poorer countries or America may be desperate for them.