Consultation on Proposal to abolish NHS Prescription Charges

1 Executive Summary

1.1 Proposal for a Bill to abolish all prescription charges on the NHS.
1.2 The cost of abolition is estimated at £46 million per annum in lost revenue though this is likely to be offset by savings from fewer acute and emergency hospital admissions resulting from patients failing to take prescribed medicines which they cannot afford.
1.3 Prescription charges have risen by far more than the rate of inflation over the past 50 years and impose a financial burden on people on the grounds of their illness. They thus undermine the NHS' founding principle of care free at the point of need.
1.4 In 2001-2002 prescription charges raised £43 million out of a total NHS Scotland prescription drug bill of £733 million. Thus charging raises proportionately little revenue for the NHS.
1.5 Prescription charges ration patient demand on the regressive grounds of cost rather than medical need. Research in the UK, Europe and Canada has consistently shown that charges result in patients not taking the treatments they require because of cost.
1.6 Prescription charges because they deter patients from taking necessary treatments result in additional NHS costs treating acute and emergency cases and in social costs, for patients, their families, industry and wider Scottish society, in extended and more severe illnesses with a danger of fatalities.
1.7 The current system of exemption from charges is neither fair nor logical in that it is neither well targeted nor transparent.
1.8 Abolition would bring to an end a system which only grants exemptions to all the sufferers of some chronic conditions but denies it to all those others with equally or more serious chronic conditions. Abolition would thus ensure greater fairness by enabling all sufferers of chronic illnesses to obtain free prescriptions to cope with their conditions.
1.9 The alternatives to abolition are either retaining the status quo or extending exemptions on grounds of chronic illness or age. Abolition remains the surest route to greater fairness.