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?

@MargotBamborough

I agree that the electoral system needs reforming, but I don't know a single person actively campaigning to change it.

The libdems campaigned for it, and a referendum for a different voting system was part of the coalition deal with the Tories, for which the Libdems sold their soul and voted for the tuition fee increases (against their manifesto), but the public voted against the change!

Yes, the proposed voting change wasn't a "full fat" proportional representation, but it could have been a change that could have started a real change away from first past the post. But, like I said, the public voted against it, and so we're left with FPTP and no real will to change it, and even worse, the Libdems are unlikely to have as much political power for many years and unlikely to form a coalition again (simply due to the damage it caused to them in terms of lost popularity).

I know right?

It's almost ......unbelievable

My dh is on regular meds and uses the boots pharmacy attached to the gps
Im sure they have access to his dob, they just , I’m guessing, didn’t notice / check it.

A new pharmacy took over and that’s why, I’m guessing, they picked up on it. Even though most of the employees were the same people and we even know them socially.

My point was that there’s nothing preventing the electronic system from accepting your money as it’s sometimes done by mistake anyway.

The swing from Labour to Tory voters is around 40 years old, not over 60s!

There is similar pattern in earlier elections, so the evidence suggests that people change their vote from red to blue as they get older. Many who voted Labour 20 years ago in their youth, now vote Tory as they become middle aged and older!

There was once a school of thought that the younger "Labour" voting youth would continue voting Labour throughout their life and thus within a decade or two, the OAPs would predominantly be voting Labour, but the evidence doesn't show that at all, as for decades, the older voters are more likely to vote Tory! So something changes as people get older, they tend to start off being more "socialist" in their view and politics but along with life experience comes a swing to the Right for a large proportion!

Well then you must have chosen a very expensive private nursary @RosesAndHellebores a quick Google search found a Guardian article stating that average nursery costs were around £80 a week in 1997.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/feb/05/socialcare.uknews

It should be free for everyone like it is here in Wales.

It was the going rate for the baby room in day nurseries 8am to 6pm in SW London at the time. A childminder would have been cheaper but they weren't as regulated then.

@Rainyrunway the article you have linked to refers to two year olds and quotes the weekly cost in London for a two year old to be £135 pw in 2001.

I was referring to the cost of a 4 month old baby where higher staff ratios are required. There was not much difference at the time between SW London nurseries.

Not all of the UK population is eligible to vote though.

No one under 18 is eligible to vote, and neither are non UK/Commonwealth citizens.

So that 20% of the population is actually a much greater percentage of the electorate and an even greater percentage of those actually registered to vote - yes I know that lack of voting among younger people is a huge problem - and it's possible to win an election under first past the post with well under 40% of the vote.

Am so surprised at the low rate of socialists in the 70+. All my friends fall into this group and we are all lefties. We realise that we are the lucky generation and are ashamed how you younger people are treated. Sorry.

Yes I know, and I voted for it.

But it wasn't what anyone asked for.

The Lib Dems royally fucked up. They exchanged their policy on tuition fees for a poorly publicised referendum on a voting system that nobody asked for, which wasn't properly explained to the electorate, which had been chosen purely because it would pose the least threat to Tory hegemony after FPTP.

I have voted for the Lib Dems for most of my adult life but I have given up now. They are pointless.

Good post.

The idea that anyone of any generation thinks 'sod those coming after' is ridiculous. All any of us, young or old, do is follow the system that the government of the day has put in. If they raise taxes we pay them, if they cut NI we don't pay that - whatever. Obviously those with the means can pay people to ensure they pay as little as possible, but for those on PAYE that's how it works.

Older people are not the only ones with a vote. If younger ones want a different system it is as much in their hands as those of their parents to vote one in.

I voted for LibDems back then too I'm sad to say. Absolutely wouldn't now

The thing is though @ShyMaryEllen while getting young people out to vote is absolutely a problem it's also true that baby boomers are the biggest cohort. They were literally the "baby boom" after all.
And I don't think people on the whole are blaming older people for the fact that things are harder now (at least not on an individual level) there does seem to be quite a lot of people who come out with "I've paid in all my life, now I'm entitled to take out as much as I can"

Under 18s don't have a vote though.

So it is unfair to blame anyone for taking on debt under a higher education system brought in by a government they weren't eligible to vote for or again. And young people rely on older generations to actually think about voting in a way that benefits the young rather than themselves, which people generally don't do which is why university students get screwed over time and time again.

None of us have any choice but to pay taxes. So it is a sad reality that most working age people are paying taxes to fund things for older generations that simply won't be around for us when we are the same age.

The tuition fees thing is particularly galling for someone like me, because I graduated in 2008 and voted for the Lib Dems in 2010 thinking it would be wonderful for future generations of students to not have to pay tuition fees. And what did we get? The Tory-LD coalition which trebled tuition fees, creating a system whereby almost no one will actually pay off their debt, and a ticking time bomb for the taxpayer starting in 2042 when the first of these debts get written off. So in 2042, people my age who voted for the Lib Dems in 2010, who will have paid off our own student debts and who will still be at least 10 years away from retirement will then have to foot the bill for writing off the debts of younger people which we didn't think should be created in the first place. Many of the people who voted Tory in 2010 will by that point be too old to care, if they are even still alive.

"Boomers" account for less than a third of the population. They cannot choose a government by themselves.

So that 20% of the population is actually a much greater percentage of the electorate and an even greater percentage of those actually registered to vote - yes I know that lack of voting among younger people is a huge problem - and it's possible to win an election under first past the post with well under 40% of the vote.

But of course that 20% aren't all voting the same way.

Well that's why I said the under 18s who make 22% of the population can't vote.

It doesn't alter the fact that you can't win elections with just the over 65 vote unless the rest of the population are so apathetic that most of them aren't voting. Whining about older people registering to vote is unreasonable, moan about the younger people who don't bother registering.

Of course there is also the fact that lots of us boomers don't vote Tory, I don't, my DH doesn't, my siblings don't. Assuming it is all down to all those old people voting Tory is letting lots of other people off the hook because they either aren't bothering to vote or they actually are voting Tory.

tax, what changes as people get older is they get more money, become wiser and vote Tory (although I am different as have voted Tory since university)

Labour has always been very keen on first past the post system which got Blair elected etc as it works well and tends to mean you don't have constant elections and alliances between different parties so I doubt it will be changed and I don't want it to be changed.

On equalising CGT and income tax, Nigel Lawson who very sadly died last week I think it was, did exactly that -made upper rate of tax/NI 40% (not today's 47%!) and CGT 40% (after allowing for inflation on gains) and I supported that move. I would also agree with merging NI and tax albeit at lower rates so eg standard tax payer pays abhout 20% tax and 13% NI so about 33% so perhaps make that the rate on buy to let and dividend income etc and ideally the upper rate for everyone under a new flat tax system.

Another gripe of mine is free bus passes for the over 60’s. Loads of my friends have two cars and still have passes! In most of England that doesn't happen, I think it's only London where over 60's get a free pass. In the rest of the country it's linked to pension age.

It's funded by bus companies getting a payment from the LA for each journey made. A two car family is unlikely to make much use of the bus since almost every journey you want to make is quicker and more convenient by car. So their bus passes won't cost much more than the cost of issuing them.

Exactly plus they aren't all voting, I have an elderly relative who is in a care home with advanced dementia and she wouldn't know what to do if you took her to a polling station. My 75 year old neighbour doesn't vote because she just isn't interested. So the Tories certainly can't rely on a guaranteed 20% of the vote because 20% of the electorate are over 65.

Let's do away with state pensions etc., once you stop working then it's off the your local branch of Dignitas, that would solve all the problems and those who've never done a days work can have your house, for free of course! That should please the naive on this site!

Now be fair, who is going to do the free childcare? You haven't thought this through have you.

I’m 59. I’ve got more left wing as I’ve got older. So has everyone l know
Inthink it’s fair to say, that in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the majority of the Metropolitan cities and a lot of the north of England, people do not become more right wing as they get older. These are all left wing areas.

Its the SE where they cluster.