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?

Sorry - brain fog. 😉

Oh, it must have been regional. I was very lucky. I started in a private one bed flat, then when I had my daughter, the council housed us into a 3 bed maisonette. When I had my son, they wrote and said it was their policy to rehouse families, with young children, into properties with a garden. I then moved to a 3 bed semi in another part of the borough. I stayed there, for 29 years, until my health made a flat a better move for me, and I'm now in a HA flat. This was Greenwich Council, London, in the early 70s.

I don't disagree with raising the age of free prescription in line with retirement age but let's remove blanket free prescriptions from people with certain conditions as well. For example someone with thyroid issues should get their levo free but why do they need -for example - antibiotics and pile cream free?

By the way I drive a really old car so no judgement for me.

I don't have an opinion when over 60's should get free prescription but it does rub me wrong way when people talk about the means to pay. I have life-long term condition that requires several medication. This is a completely different situation to someone who get the occasional prescription. I actually resent the medical associated cost irrespective of whether or not I can afford. Having illness is expensive particularly when you had your conditions from an early age.

It's free in Wales, but even if it wasn't I would buy a yearly prepayment. I've got 14 items on my script and I need them all!

Ps I've got a huge SUV. It has a big boot for my wheelchair and it's a Motability car!

Interesting how David 'Two brains' Willetts promotes intergenerational rage when the actual issue is the shift of taxation from companies to individuals. More than any other change, this benefits shareholders and those with the biggest pension pots invested in shares, as well as higher earners rewarded in shares or on share price movements.
On the basis of many averages (I don't know too many people in my age group) spending £2,000 per household AFTER housing costs) he has outlined the changes that he would like to see.
Perhaps the time for politicians writing manifestos has passed, Ken Clarke said that anyone who believes the contents are fools and at the next election, neither party will be able to tell you who would be PM for the 5 year term of the Parliament - the 1922 committee will not even be able to tell you how long the next election-winning Conservative PM can be in post before being deposed.
Maybe a better situation would be a collection of 15 or 25 or 40 issues important to the nation (how long should elapse between a senior civil servant or minister leaving office and working in a similar area, elimination of subsidised alcohol in workplaces, whether libraries will still be open and free, availability of GP appointments, how many buses per day constitute a usable bus service, minimum refuse collection standards, what English citizens outside of London might expect from transport policy etc) and the parties could offer us a selection of the things that voters have raised as important to them.
Mumsnetters may be a demographic with a higher than average education and income, but bring a wealth of life experience and practical suggestions to the table.

I agree it should be income based.

It also pisses me off when people get things like paracetamol or ibuprofen on a prescription. They're only 30p in the shop! And yes, it's usually 'old' people that do this (I know a few) simply because they get free prescriptions.

I agree with OP, people can pay for a prepayment certificate of about £10 a month, all this extra cash would help furnish the NHS with more money.

yes Scotland and Wales get free prescriptions, but from what I hear from my friends in these countries they do not get as many life saving drugs and wish they did pay for prescriptions and NhS car parking fees.

Every single person in a queue ahead of you, so left before you, but you still managed to leave in time to see every single one of them and all their cars.

YABU. Certain prescriptions should always be free. It really grates on me that I have to pay for my antidepressants now I'm in full-time work, after years of getting them free! And I know I'm going to be just as angry when the time comes to access menopause relief, which should also be free! 😡

How would you operate an income-based scheme? People having to fill in an earnings return every time they get a prescription? Bring three payslips to show to the pharmacist?

Also, I think people advocating that everything should be means-tested must either earn very large or very small salaries, as they don't seem to understand that for a lot of people bobbing along with an average income there would be no point in doing extra hours or putting in for promotion as anything they gained would be immediately lost by being excluded from means-tested allowances. Means-testing traps people on low incomes and doesn't impact on those with high ones.

I agree that prescriptions could only be issued for items costing more than £2 or something, and also with PPs saying that people having one condition with free drugs shouldn't necessarily mean that all the rest of their prescriptions should be free, although having a vulnerability in one area can make people more susceptible in others, so that wouldn't always work for clinical reasons. Plus, the admin involved in deciding who got what free would probably far outweigh the costs recovered, so it would be pointless.

I believe in universal benefits, paid out of higher taxes than we have now, and would like to see everyone who is able to work liable for tax, whether they choose to work or not. The old, the young, the ill, the disabled and anyone otherwise unable to work (eg carers for the sick or disabled) should be exempt, but if all unexempted able-bodied adults paid into a citizens tax, everyone could take out and get free education, health and other services. After that, people could spend or save how they wished, without worrying that means-testing would take away anything above subsistence level.

I’ve just come out of hospital after a big operation and I can report they didn’t give me paracetamol or ibuprofen to take home as they said the NHS can’t afford to provide (they did give it to me for the 3 nights I was in) but just coedine and iron. I’m not a pensioner.

Not all GPS will give the paracetamol and ibuprofen on prescription. My mum, 73, gets lots of meds free on prescription but buys her paracetamol and ibuprofen.

Many of these older people may well get their car through notability - they might pay the extra to get a nicer car but aren’t necessarily buying them outright. Her car isn’t quite a Range Rover but is a decent car that would set you back a few hundred a month to buy on finance. Her medication would likely add up to over £100 a month too.

I would doubt there are many women alive who paid the 'small stamp' I started working in 1970 and it was being phased out then.

'I believe in universal benefits, paid out of higher taxes than we have now, and would like to see everyone who is able to work liable for tax, whether they choose to work or not. The old, the young, the ill, the disabled and anyone otherwise unable to work (eg carers for the sick or disabled) should be exempt, but if all unexempted able-bodied adults paid into a citizens tax, everyone could take out and get free education, health and other services. After that, people could spend or save how they wished, without worrying that means-testing would take away anything above subsistence level.'

ShyMaryEllen

I wish this could happen.

@JudgeJ There are plenty of women alive who were working in the sixties and before then. You only have to be in your seventies to have been working in the nineteen sixties. People left school at age 15 and went into full time work then. So someone who is age 87 could easily have started working in 1950. And there are plenty of people alive older than 87.

YABU how do you know that those cars aren’t mobility cars you can have any car you want on that so long as you can afford to pay the deposit having a fancy car doesn’t necessarily mean big bank balance.

I’m mid 70s, I paid what was known as ‘the Married Women’s stamp’ for quite some time. Low paid, temp, part time work meant I needed money for ‘then’ not the future. Coupled with a few years as a SAHM (before NI credits were paid) that choice has left me with a reduced state pension. Foolish in hindsight, especially as I did pay a full NI contribution in later years and joined a pension scheme.

Of course I could have declined to join the pension scheme, and I would now be the recipient of Pension Credit, with the added benefits it brings. Instead, my income is a few quid more. What price responsibility?

I wonder also if younger people also realise that benefits that start to be paid for illness and/or disability prior to state pension age, (PIP or DLA) are more generous than benefits for the same condition that might start fairly soon afterwards (Attendance Allowance). There is no disability element, recipients of AA can’t join the Motability Scheme.

I paid the reduced stamp for a few years as we were saving every penny to buy a house. I am still working, at 70, and very much alive and I know women older than me like aunties in their late 80s and even in their 90s. I think there are probably plenty of us.

We can't always make the "right" decision or what seems right in hindsight. I paid the reduced stamp for a few years, like you I needed the money, but paid the full stamp for long enough to get my full pension.

The thing I always find odd is that women who were paying the full stamp and then gave up work to have children got full credits, if you worked after children but paid the reduced stamp you got no credits even though you were actually paying something. It seems unfair somehow.

@Iwasafool all sorts of odd rules that caught some of us unawares. Thank goodness the younger generations are more pension aware.

My mum is 87 and also paid the Married Womans stamp. She went back to work when i was three months old and same with DB.

I made sure I started paying the full stamp in plenty of time to get my full pension. Been a payroll manager for many years and while I'm not a pension expert I know enough. It just always seemed an odd rule to me.

There were no childcare vouchers, so most low paid women could not afford paid childcare.