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?

Tax the billionaires. That would bring a lot of revenue in!

Free prescriptions cost around £10billion a year. The majority of that is for over 60 and under 16s and in the nations that do not charge.

As with most things it is not a simple linear saving if the programme ended or changed.

The cost of exemptions due to long term conditions is estimated to be a relatively small percentage of that.

compliance with medication will decrease the burden on the health care system in the short and long term and those costs are significant.

If people are rationing medications, not taking medications or seeing more health professionals due to not taking the medication then the amount saves will diminish very quickly. Add in decreased productivity and increased reliance on ill health benefits and you can see that advanced modelling is needed to see if there would be any real benefit.

Selecting exemption for only the medication related to the long term health condition is also very challenging. Having a long term health condition is likely to put you at more risk of other conditions.

The one thing that could be considered is increasing the age at which prescriptions become free. However, I don’t think that would result in any significant savings.

Look at how much tax self-employed people are evading avoiding. Look at how much the government are spending on pensions - both state and public sector. Look at NHS waste. Look at grossly inflated costs of government projects.

Free prescriptions for wealthy people is absolute nibshit in the grand scheme of things. It’s pennies.

Means testing is an expensive process, and prone to error. The cost of adjusting someone's benefits every time their income changes is significant, especially if they have income from more than one source and/or aren't on PAYE. And it's challenging for the self-employed, whose income can fluctuate significantly. It takes time to process the adjustments, so self-employed people often find that by the time their benefits are reduced because they've had a good month, they're in a bad month and utterly skint.

Errors, either by DWP or the claimant, lead to over and underpayments, both of which can cause significant hardship.

UC has improved things somewhat for employees, thanks to RTI reporting, but they're still constantly playing catch-up. If someone on a ZHC has a month when they don't get many hours, it can be almost another month before this is reflected in their UC.

It's ok for those who are organised, numerate and have good literacy, but that's far from everyone. Even my highly intelligent and organised niece, currently on mat leave and with a partner who was self-employed, struggled to manage reporting his earnings and work out how much UC they would get each month (they're in a high rent area, so get help with housing costs). He is now employed, and earning less as a result, simply because it was such a nightmare to manage their finances.

It would definitely help the system if high earners paid for prescriptions, not life saving prescriptions like diabetes medication as it wouldn’t be affordable even for the rich.
Out patient services are covered in Ireland under the hse but GP appointments and prescriptions are chargeable if you are earning over 40,000.
A lot of patients are brought across the country for dialysis several times a week in taxis as an outpatient.
As it is in Ireland anyone on a medical card, for various reasons use the GP a lot making it harder for patients to get an appointment, if everyone was free there would never be spare appointments, as workers only attend when they really have too, paying €60 euro.
Means testing isn’t necessary as if your earning over 40,000 you don’t bother applying for you and if you do qualify, it’s with you until you earn over 40,000.

I agree with this. It applied to me before I retired because I have an underactive thyroid. It's fair enough for the levothyroxine to be free but I can't understand why I got everything free. In fact I wrote to the Secretary of State at the time but they said it would cost too much to work out if any other medication is related to the condition- Surely the GP could use a code or something.
I also don't agree with over 60s receiving free prescriptions if they can afford to pay.

Even if the person on benefits is paying £2k a month in rent, and some people working have no rent or mortgage to pay? Even if they have a disability that means they have significant extra costs arising from that?

What a ridiculous idea @Samdelila.

Currently people who get Medical Exemption are people with cancer, permanent fistulas, specific diabetes types, Addison’s disease, myasthenia gravis, hypothyroidism, epilepsy requiring constant medication, and physical disabilities restricting mobility. The vast majority of these people are not going to be in a position to be amassing serious wealth.

When I got cancer my exemption certificate was given to me immediately when I got my diagnosis - and I needed it because the volumes of drugs I had to start taking were significant. I hadn't had the foggiest idea that this was going to happen. I was in no fit state to be plunged into the complexities of a means testing assessment - I would not have been able to cope, and the last thing any kind of caring system should do to someone reeling from the shock of knowing they have cancer is to dump that on them and require them to suddenly open up all their personal financial records. The admin cost of doing that assessment would probably cost the government significant money in civil servant's time and resources - let's guess a cost of £50 per patient, the vast majority of whom would be found to actually not be particularly wealthy so most of those £50 costs are wasted money anyway. For the small proportion for whom that cruel and unreasonable assessment results in the government saying they are too wealtthy for free prescriptions, they can then buy a prepayment certificate for £114.50 per year, so the government saves a grand total of £64.50 per wealthy seriously-ill-person at the cost of significant suffering and distress.

What I would do to save the government money? Well I recently read that the cost of Male Violence Against Women is about £66bn per year in terms of lost productivity, treatment of the physical and mental wounds of victims, providing housing and resources to those fleeing it and incarcerating the small percentage of perpetrators who end up being convicted. Meanwhile the amount of investment that goes towards preventing Male Violence Against Women tiny in comparison. MVAW causes many times more harm and death than terrorism but has a fraction of the budget to combat it because our society doesn't value those lives as much. Tripling the money, resources and effort spent preventing Male Violence Against Women would save many billions in the long term.

You can't get either of those things for anxiety or ND alone.

Believe me, I've just been through the process (for panic disorder) and was refused.

But it's not that clear cut. With my condition, which is on the list , if I get any illness it causes a flare of the underlying condition. So treating any illness promptly and effectively is key. The alternative is a lengthy ICU stay.

To make op feel better though I don't claim any benefits and I work full time as a higher rate tax payer so I'm pretty sure the £ 120 a year I'm costing the government (by not needing to get a prepaid certificate) is not worth her stressing over

Bringing in a universal basic income that's enough to live on rather than managing and approving several benefits would save a fortune but it'll never happen.

Is this you, Rachel Reeves?

Who are millionnaires on DLA and PIP?
I hate posts like this. "I know one person whose fmaily thinks she is making things up"- it's your personal opinion she doesnt need it, clearlywhoever assessed her begged to differ. Do oyou know how many people are entitled to these and don't get them/have been refused DLA/PIP?
How do you know your other two people you know dont have additional costs due to their autism? Are you a specialist? Do oyu live in their heads? What are your credentials?

You sound very jaded and jealous. The solution- be disabled. Seriously. Or look after a disabled person. And then see how easy life with a disability is, and come to tell us how it went.

Thats extremely magnanimous of you. However I advise you to do more research before starting threads where you will massively offend certain groups..

Maybe also NHS maternity care and birthing in a hospital should be means tested too………after all it’s a life choice, not an illness?

Means testing for PIP and DLA will leave many disabled people stranded financially if a partner or other household member included in the calculation puts them outside the eligibility criteria, for many with life changing disabilities this would remove what dignity and independence they have left and is why I have always been absolutely against it after 12 years in benefits casework.

Do you think being Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish should be a special condition?

Currently prescriptions are free along with I believe hospital parking In these areas of the UK 🇬🇧

We definitely need urgent reform of the current ridiculous benefit system. I regularly do Attendance allowance forms for people with hundreds of thousand in the bank and living in massive houses. They are not even at the point of needing to paying for care.

Absolutely agree.
I also have a disabled child and our outgoings becauseof that are crazy, although none of my colleagues (or anyone excelt the closest family) would have known. We spend far more than what we get from DLA. I can imagine people who dont know what our life inside four walls looks like would judge us claiming it.

But these conditions frequently spread and affect your body and wellbeing much further than just the one narrow initial diagnosis.

You might just as well say that pregnant women and new mothers shouldn't get free dental care, as teeth are at the other end of the body and have nothing to do with the womb and the 'business end'... except it's very well known that pregnancy can cause knock-on effects elsewhere in the woman's body - including vulnerabilities to teeth.

Moreover, even if it could be determined that severe tooth pain is definitely not caused as a direct result of pregnancy or giving birth, it's hardly going to help you focus properly on giving birth and looking after and feeding a newborn when you're in constant pain elsewhere.

Similarly, with the above conditions (and others, of course), not only do you not know what other nasties in the body the condition could have caused or exacerbated; but if your life is already a constant uphill challenge living with one condition, something else added on top can be the final straw - whereas a usually healthy, able-bodied person who develops that problem in isolation for a short time may be far better equipped to physically and emotionally cope with it.

The prescriptions are controlled by the haematologist, not the GP. He has to go and collect them from the oncology dept at the hospital. He has no control over what they issue. As I said, the haematologist won't change the prescription down to just what he actually takes despite asking many times.

Many of the train operating companies are now controlled by the Dept of Transport, so it really doesn't matter which quango pays it as it still comes out of taxpayer money.

I don't think that billionaires should be able to avoid paying the correct amount of tax.

Calm down dear, this whole thread is a goad fest.

Free bus pass age has already raised as it's link to state pension age.

But, yes, free prescriptions age should be increased to match state pension age too! Clearly just a civil service/politician cock up that it's not increased in line with other benefits like state pension, free bus pass, etc.