To think blanket free prescriptions for over 60s NEED to end?

[Idratherbepaddleboarding]

I know this will be controversial but I popped to the doctors in my lunch break to collect my prescription and joined a longish queue. Everyone in front of me was over 60 and collecting huge bags of medications and I was the only one paying for any of it.

I don’t dispute that I should have to pay but often I can’t afford it which has led to me having to miss days of my medication, leaving me feeling very emotional and at times suicidal (medication is for depression). Perhaps if everyone who has over a certain income had to pay, they’d be able to lower the prescription charge for everyone or be able to afford the pay rises they say they can’t afford for nurses and junior doctors.

The killer was that every single one of the people in front of me got back into massive, brand new SUVs, one couple into a Range Rover and another into a Jaguar. If they can afford to own (and run!) cars like that, paying for a prescription would be a drop in the ocean for them. AIBU to think that free prescriptions should be limited to those in pension credit just like Universal Credit?

When DH’s grandad died, his mum and auntie shared out his collection of prescription paracetamol and ibuprofen (I know they should be returned to the pharmacy but they’d only have been destroyed and both are ex nurses so I guess they know what they’re doing). I’m not joking, there were boxes and boxes of the stuff, we didn’t buy painkillers for years and these will have cost the NHS a lot more than they would from the supermarket and weren’t even taken by the person that they were intended for! Surely paracetamol and ibuprofen should not be available on the NHS at all?

I really don’t want to bash the over 60s and it wouldn’t be a vote winner for politicians but surely we can’t afford to keep free prescriptions for those that can afford them?

One of the points was that 20% of baby boomers also own a second property. Do you think ANY millennials do? Yes, of course they do. There are rich individuals in all age groups.

I don't think that many of those getting free prescriptions at 60 now ever thought, or expected, that they would be entitled to these. I know I certainly didnt.

I think you should blame the Government for this one, not those on the recieving end. Its hard to see why they didnt increase the eligibility age for prescriptions in line with the state pension age, like they are doing with bus passes.
If they had done that, I doubt there would have been much fuss, as it would have been eclipsed by the pension age issue.

The trouble is, there is a big difference between not missing something that you never had, and having something taken away. If the Government were to suddenly withdraw free prescriptions at 60 now, especially if it was done in one fell swoop, that would be another cohort of potential lost votes for them at the next General Election. Avoiding that is probably very high on their agenda.

I think too that many do not realise that if free prescriptions were taken away from the over 60s now, then it’s not going to be given back when they get to 60 no matter how hard done by their generation is.

After all, just look at Uni fees - the boomers got free Uni education it’s now gone. Does anyone think that despite todays youth facing high cost of living, no prospect of owning a home and unlikely to even be able to afford children….the government will reverse and make Uni free again?

I don’t think so. So one thing to keep in mind is if you take away a benefit from an older generation, you are sacrificing it for your generation regardless of whether or not your generation might actually need that benefit.

Yeah but there's no way it WILL be available in say 20 years anyway.

Why not? Life expectancy is now declining. The public are making it clear that the NHS needs to be funded better. The large pensioner demographic are the baby boomers (second largest generation) and they are dying off, but behind them the next generation set to retire is Gen X the smallest generation ever. We won’t have the imbalance of young to old that we have now in twenty years.

the boomers got free Uni education it’s now gone Most people at uni now wouldn’t have got free uni education had they been born in boomer years

👏👏👏🙌🙌🙌

"boomers" on the whole didn't need a degree for the average job though. Sure they did for some but plenty of jobs you could get with decent o levels, so it wasn't the necessity then that it is now.

See also free travel and winter fuel allowance

Sorry, but what's 'not earned money'? Your father will have paid into his pension, and earned the money he used to pay for whatever else he has. Pensions of £50k are rare, (as I'm sure you are aware) and anyone on a final salary getting that is definitely in the top few percent of earners.

Young people are not being asked to fund free things - older people have funded free things for young people all their lives. That doesn't mean that they don't feel upset at how things are going for younger people though - why do you think older people won't care about their children as you do for yours? As has been pointed out several times, means-testing prescriptions would cost more than it would save, and would result in more serious illness for older people, so young people wouldn't benefit anyway.

How would you means-test? Prescriptions just free for those on pension credit? So free for people who haven't paid into any occupational pension, but not for those who have tried to provide for their older age? Free for those on less than £X income with less than £Y in assets? So they have to fill in a form every year, and get their house valued? Oh, and people in expensive areas die young if they can't afford to pay for multiple medications? And people learn to spend as much as possible before retirement so they get free social care as well? Would you also means-test their children if they give them any money to help with a deposit, or pay for university? The bank of mum and dad is responsible for more inequality than prescriptions, IMO.

I hope your children have a happy retirement with proper healthcare and pensions too. I don't see the best way of fighting for that as taking from their grandparents though. All that will do is completely remove the chances of that happening. If we all stick together and fight for a good deal for pensioners now, there is more chance that we and our children will get a good deal in the future. Intergenerational conflict is mutually destructive and manufactured by a divisive government.

@ShyMaryEllen You made the following comment on someone else's post "Sorry, but what's 'not earned money'? Your father will have paid into his pension, and earned the money he used to pay for whatever else he has."

Well there is such a thing as a non contributory pension whereby employers made the contributions and employees didn't. These went on for years and years. Perhaps that's what the poster meant? Pensions have changed recently. To be fair the baby boomer generation benefitted from lots of things such as 'non contributory pensions where they didn't need to make contributions and the pot grew from money from employers, massive house price growth (not earned income), free university tuition ... so really did well. Also this 'they paid in so should get x y or z free' - actually no, most people have not paid enough in NI contributions to fund health/care and pensions - the tiny amount contributed by many over the years would not pay for all that hence why the CURRENT taxpayers are paying for the pensions/care costs/etc etc. Where do people get the idea that the pot is built up from NI over the years sat around waiting to be spent on retirement. That applies to a private pension but not a state pension.

I agree OP. My late uncle used to hoard paracetamols he got from the GP and has hundreds of them. Terrible.

It's not a 'freebie' - it's medication to promote the health and wellbeing of a part of society who are now more susceptible to illness due to their age. I'm interested to know whether everyone thinks that free prescriptions should also be taken away from pregnant women, those with long term illnesses, etc too 'if they can afford it'?

Public health will be focused on using limited money to make the biggest difference in preventing the decline of health which then results in much more expensive and extensive treatment. For what is effectively £100 a year they can ensure that someone who has moved into an at risk age category has access to free medication which could prevent say, a trip to a&e (average cost to the NHS of £400+) or an overnight hospital stay (£700+).

All this angst about paracetamols- they cost pennies to produce! They don't cost the NHS anything like the price of a prescription!

In 1978 when I went to university a miniscule percentage of people went. About 3% excluding the polys which pushed it to five. There is simply no way 30% to 40% of young people could go to uni on a fully funded basis. Perhaps we should go back to the 70s with most people leaving school with a handful of CSEs at 16.

It's a significant concern that many young people leave uni with huge debts (although the majority will never repay them) but are unable to construct grammatically correct sentences or perform simple calculations. There's no point constructing "sophisticated" excel spreadsheets if the people constructing them can't see that the calculations are wrong and identify issues with the formulae.

I got my fees paid. I got a minimum grant of about £300 per annum to provide for my maintenance. My parents had to pay my living costs.

You could be right about the non-contributory pension schemes. I didn't think about those, but even so, they would, effectively, have been part of a salary. My own father had a good pension (civil service) and I don't know if he paid in in the sense of seeing a deduction on his pay slips, but I do know that he always said that his salary was lower than it would have been in the private sector, but he would get a decent pension (which he didn't live to benefit from). My mum did ok out of it, and didn't pay much NI as she got her 'stamp' paid all the time she was at home with children (well over 20 years), but she wasn't a Boomer, but the generation before.

I didn't say that older people paid x or y so should get z free - I countered the idea that they are being paid for by young people as though they have never contributed anything, as that's just not true. By no means all Boomers made a fortune on houses - that's a very SE-centric point of view, and tbh, many people I hear moaning about it have benefits hugely from having a very different life from their parents on the back of it. Whether that is private education, help with deposits, inheritances or whatever, it's not just the Boomers who benefited, and by no means all of them did anyway. Only about 5% of young people went to university, and most people lived in council houses until relatively recently. It wasn't until the 80s that buying houses became widespread, and the 90s when having a degree was seen as a right (a double-edged sword though that turned out to be).

Yes, of course there is no 'pot' of money for pensions. Why do people always say that as though they are the only ones to know? The point is that people have traditionally paid for the generation above them in age, in the expectation that the generation below will do the same for them. If governments have mismanaged that, it's hardly fair to blame people for being pissed off, is it? OR to tell a whole generation that they paid in for nothing.

My prescription has my age on it, and no one ticks anything. The chemist automatically dispenses them free of charge.

My husband didn't realise they would be free after he turned 60 and only found out when he started reaching for the card machine and was stopped.

Good lord. Not this crap again. The only people to blame for the state of the country are the people who run it. Not a single individual gets, or ever got, to decide how much pensions were/are, what salaries were/are, how much properties were/are, how much tax they pay/paid.

If today's government offered final salary pensions to everyone between 20 & 60 there's not a single person who would complain. If they capped property prices at 1995 prices every single person that could would take advantage of that. No one would moan if we got education, dentist, prescriptions 'free' at point of use.

The only people to blame are the people who have been running our country into the ground for years - regardless of what party they are.

You didn't need a university education for the majority of jobs including many professional ones. If you did need a degree you didn't have to pay tuition fees and most people received money for living costs too.. Now degrees are required for many more jobs and students have to pay the living costs and tuition fees themselves

No that's true.

But of course only about 20% got the chance of doing O-levels. If you failed the 11 plus you were stuck with CSE.

What really saddens me about this thread is the contempt younger people hold for the generation that comprises their parents.

But of course only about 20% got the chance of doing O-levels. If you failed the 11 plus you were stuck with CSE.

True. Plus the 11 plus wasn't always a level playing field. I don't know if it happened everywhere, or often, but I have read several times of girls who passed the 11 plus, but because that year more girls had passed than boys, some were rejected in favour of boys who had done less well. But that is a different thread ...

@Crikeyalmighty

I think we could up basic tax to 32%

So income tax 32, NIC, 12, student loan 9, workplace pension 5, so total deductions from £15k onwards would be a whopping 58%, i.e. over half your wages, and that's for a basic rate taxpayer. Wow. You think the electorate would accept that?

I don't know. We let them down big time. Look at the mess we're leaving them.

You want respect ? Earn it.