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.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Our health service is by no means free
Letter to the Herald
Our health service is by no means free
IT WAS interesting to listen to the chancellor of the exchequer addressing the Trades Union Congress on September 16. He talked about the possibilities for universal education and health services in poor Asian and African countries by comparing them with the situation in the UK. If the examples he gave hadn't been so pathetic, they would have been funny.
Mr Brown said that we have a "free" health service. He must use a different one from the one I use. Well, given his income, he's probably one of Bupa's best customers! After paying national insurance for all of our working lives, people in the UK still have to fork out a scandalous £6.50 if they go to their GP and get a prescription for a wide-spectrum antibiotic to treat a mild bacterial infection. This is well above the cost of the drugs. Don't try to tell me otherwise – I worked in the trade for 22 years. In any case, wasn't it the Labour Party's once proud boast that the NHS was "paid for by universal taxation and free at the point of use"? Aye, right! Tell that to your chemist, dentist, optician, chiropodist, etc.
Colin Fox, MSP, is trying to get a bill through the Scottish Parliament which will abolish prescription charges. I don't have the figures, but no doubt someone has, of the number of people who are put off collecting their prescribed drugs because of their outrageous cost. Then, in turn, the illness they were prescribed for may well become worse; more time may be lost from work and production falls; an infection may be spread to others and the situation "snowballs".
No doubt all the wee Labour drones in Holyrood will be whipped to vote this bill down. What will their excuse be when prescription charges are abolished in Wales in 2007 as promised by the Labour-controlled assembly?
Barry Lees, 12 Denholm Street, Greenock
