SCRAP Prescription Charges
The weblog of the Scottish Campaign to Remove All Prescription Charges. Keeping you updated on all the news about Colin Fox MSP's bill to the Scottish Parliament.
Monday, October 04, 2004
Wales cuts prescriptions by £1
BBC News
Prescription charges in Wales have fallen by £1 in the first step towards making them completely free by 2007.
From Friday patients will pay £5 for a single prescription, and pre-payment plans for drugs will also be reduced.
Wales is the only part of the UK to promise to scrap the charges, which remain at £6.40 elsewhere.
First Minister Rhodri Morgan ruled out significant numbers of "health tourists" crossing into Wales to take advantage of cheaper prescriptions.
He said he did not think people from outside Wales would not swamp the system.
"All our experience from the under-25s policy is that the number of people who take advantage is minimal," he said.
"We do not want to subsidise the English health system."
Mr Morgan added the rules would be changed to ensure that only people with a GP and a pharmacist in Wales would benefit, before the charges are scrapped in 2007.
Charges for individual prescriptions in Wales have been frozen at £6 and free for the under 25s since 2001 - unlike the rest of the UK.
Health Minister Jane Hutt
Jane Hutt says the assembly's twin track approach on health is working
'Postcode lottery'
At present, there is nothing to stop patients from across the border coming to Wales for their medicines to be dispensed.
The Royal College of GPs' Wales spokesperson Dr Mark Boulter said: "While we welcome any reduction in prescription charges for patients in Wales we are worried this may create a postcode lottery for people living on the border between Wales and England.
"Under the new rules a Welsh patient living in England with a GP in Wales would not benefit from these reductions. We want to see reduced charges for all patients no matter where they live."
Julian Bartram, a pharmacist in Sedbury, Gloucestershire, just on the other side of Offa's Dyke, said he expected the number of paid prescriptions he dealt with "to drop quite dramatically".
"Anybody with any sense would go over onto the Welsh side," he said.
"They [Welsh pharmacists] can dispense English prescriptions as well as Welsh ones."
Secondary legislation could be introduced to tighten that loophole Asthma patient Lynne Haeney, from Swansea, who has been paying £18 a month to treat her condition, supports the cut.
"To reduce it by a pound is a step in the right direction, but it would ideally, and will be in the future, be down to nothing," she said.
"It will make a great difference. Chronic sufferers of asthma, like diabetes and other conditions, should be exempt from prescription charges."
Already, about 50% of people in Wales are exempt from paying for drugs ordered by their GP.
They include the over-60s and people with some long-term medical conditions, like diabetes.
This year, the cost implication of the policy has been calculated at £2.7m.
Welsh Health Minister Jane Hutt said the reduction was designed to help people with chronic diseases like asthma and cancer, who are not exempt, to get back to work and training.
"It's the Welsh way of improving health. It's our funding and our decision," she said.
"We know it's going to be popular... and the rest of the UK is looking to us.
"In fact there is evidence by the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Office of Fair Trading, that many people don't get their prescriptions dispensed because they can't pay the charges, and that can result in people getting ill and needing hospital treatment."
'Deprive patients'
The pharmaceutical industry said the price cut should not lead to patients missing out on medicines.
"It is important that reducing the contributions made by patients to the cost of prescriptions, does not deprive patients of the medicines they need in an effort to keep the overall prescribing budget down," said Dr Richard Greville, director of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry Cymru Wales.
"To reduce the range of treatments available to patients in Wales, or to reduce prescribing which clinicians believe is appropriate and evidence based is not an acceptable alternative."
Plaid Cymru health spokesman Rhodri Glyn Thomas said the assembly government had reneged on a commitment to ensure that people with a chronic lifelong condition would be free of prescription charges.
"Today people would be paying a pound less for their prescriptions, but had Labour kept true to their word, those people suffering from a chronic condition would have been benefiting from no prescription charges for some months."
Plaid wanted charges scrapped and Mr Thomas said he was "happy that Labour has finally followed our policy".
The Liberal Democrats in Wales have criticised the staged cutting of prescription costs, saying the long-term chronically sick needed free prescriptions now.
"Labour promised free prescriptions, but patients are being made to wait for this slow process," said the party's assembly health spokesperson Kirsty Williams.
