Consultation on Proposal to abolish NHS Prescription Charges

7. Paying for Abolition

7.1 Prescription charging costs the NHS money in acute and emergency treatment of patients who fail to take their prescription drugs because of cost. Even if only a small percentage of the estimated +70,000 Scots who fail to have their prescriptions filled out subsequently become ill and require hospital admission, or invasive emergency treatment, the costs to the NHS would still run into millions.

7.2 Add to that the costs of those who become long term or permanently disabled (e.g. the glaucoma sufferer who faced blindness) because of failure to take essential medication and the costs to society in benefits payments and care provision could run into tens of thousands of pounds per patient. Thus there are real costs which arise from not abolishing prescription charges, both monetary and in individuals’ health, which should be set against the extra funding that abolition would require.

7.3 In 2001-2002 the amount raised by charging was £46.3 million out of a total NHS prescription drugs bill for the year of £733 million. To put that in perspective just 6% of the cost of prescription drugs was raised by charging.

7.4 In that same year the cost to the NHS of prescription drugs rose by 10% i.e. over £70 million. Thus inflation and the higher profits of drug companies cost the NHS considerably more than the costs that would be incurred by the abolition of prescription charges.

7.5 Last year the Department of Health’s underspend was £144 million. That is of the £6,604 million which the Scottish Executive set aside for spending on health only £6,460 million was actually spent.

7.6 Underspends of this scale by the Scottish Health Department are regular rather than rare occurrences and thus the Scottish NHS could easily absorb the costs of abolishing prescription charges just as it already absorbs the increased costs of purchasing prescription medicines from the drugs companies.

7.7 Therefore there is no need to raise the funding required to abolish charges from alternative sources as the NHS already has the resources to finance this modest and fair reform.