Helping the government save money

[Samdelila]

I think free prescriptions for people with certain conditions should be means tested. What else could the government cut to save money?

You seem weirdly obsessed with pre-payment certificates... 🤔

I disagree that there have been tons of better suggestions. Tax the rich more seems to crop up a lot but that’s about it. Continuing to allow people on benefits to receive free prescriptions is not demonising them it is ensuring that they still get the medication they need but not otherwise afford. Everyone else would be paying about £10 a month, and before people holler that that’s not worth saving it is better than nothing. We have got to start cutting back somewhere.

And you seem weirdly obsessed with giving money to people who do not need it.

Not to mention the £371 daily attendance allowance for peers sitting in the House of Lords - in addition to travel expenses and overnight subsistence for those living outside Greater London.

Yes, it does need reviewing. Before I became old enough to qualify for free prescriptions, I became hypothyroid, so require lifeling thyroxine. Because of this, ALL my prescriptions from then on were free, which I didn't expect, and I would have been more than happy to pay for other medication, but that's not how the system worked.

Do I really? When did I say that, then?

There are also benefits to society if people have easy access to the medication that they need, rather than going without and ending up costing the state a fortune. It invariably costs way more in ambulances, paramedics, hospital treatments and long-term effects of people's health worsening, including the (by some) much-despised disability and incapacity benefits, attendance allowance etc.

Of course, many people value the inherent worth and dignity of individuals as well as acknowledging their place in wider society, even if they are disabled or have illnesses requiring considerable financial support that much more privileged people don't need.

You seem firmly fixated on the idea that, if all of these tiresome people with the temerity to get long-term ill and/or disabled could be made to stump up £120 a year, the economy would boom. If that's true, why don't you campaign to require everybody earning over a certain amount to pay an additional £120 a year towards the NHS? Those who need prescriptions then benefit by getting them 'free' and those who don't will benefit far more from being lucky enough to enjoy good health.

Getting people who can easily afford it to buy a pre payment certificate would not cause the economy to boom. That would just be the teeniest tiniest tip of the iceberg - so I hope you’re ready to take a lot more pain. Because we need to save money or this country might go bankrupt.
Making any cuts at all is going to be very difficult - even just attempting to stimulate a discussion about it has led people to say I have no heart, I have no soul, I’m jealous, I’m obsessive, I’m abhorrent, I despise disabled people etc.
Very few posters have contributed helpful suggestions about how we can cut spending although I am grateful to those who have made the effort.
I hope this country doesn’t go bankrupt, but if we do it will be the poorest and the least fortunate of us who suffer the most - and it is this eventuality that I am trying to avoid.

The country is not going to go bankrupt due to prescription costs.

People on certain benefits already get free prescriptions, people who are not but need regular meds have a pre-payment certificate, people who rarely need meds just pay up when needed.

How much will be saved by scrapping free prescriptions for people with certain health conditions?

How come Scotland and Wales manage just fine with free scripts for everyone?

You do understand that the government owns the Bank of England, don't you? We cannot go bankrupt; it is simply not economically possible.

Lots of people suggested cuts to the ridiculous perks MPs receive, that was a pretty good start imo. You don't have a monopoly on ideas.

" I am trying to avoid" How are you going to be proactive in this? I've asked you previously how you're going to present your ideas to government, what you're actually planning to do with these ideas. You keep saying " I " a lot. What is your actual plan??

This.

Any idea presented to you which does not involve taking from the sick or poor is ignored by you in favour of discussing taking prescriptions from your mate diabetics.

You clearly haven't costed or researched this, since you think benefits claimants get free prescriptions (they don't) or that everyone who needs to pay can afford £120 a year (they can't).

Various charities have researched and costed this and have found that free prescriptions for chronic illnesses save the NHS in the long term. This has also been explained to by PPs and ignored because it doesn't fit your rhetoric of saving by taking from the most vulnerable in society.

That is why people think your ideas are "heartless and abhorrent."

You may not despise disabled and seriously long-term ill people; but you are clearly wanting to discriminate against them and punish them financially for their poor fortune in not having good health and/or being able-bodied. You do also seem to begrudge people who need lifesaving drugs getting any help at all with them, having already paid a shedload of tax for sometimes decades. Do you maybe blame them for their illnesses; or do you think that they're grinning about managing to steal a march on the healthy people by getting all of these exciting medications as an enormous treat at a reduced or even free price that isn't an option for people who don't need them?

Honestly, it just makes me think of a petulant man who, on hearing about a community scheme to provide free sanpro in toilets in poor areas where women and girls often struggle to afford to buy it and live much compromised lives as a direct result, complains because there aren't any similar 'freebies' in the gents' and 'why should they get the privileges'?

On average, people with diabetes (both kinds) die years before their contemporaries who don't have diabetes, so maybe the question should be how can the country afford to pay pensions for all the extra years that the latter, healthy, group live for?

This. So well said.

👏👏👏

This country is nowhere near going bankrupt. With every post you just sound more clueless. All this because someone is getting a freebie you can't get. Prescriptions for life-threatening conditions are free because those conditions are life-threatening. Get it? Good, now go and do something constructive.