£7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Outrageous! got my medication yesterday which i've been on for about 3 years and i have to take one nightly/daily, i cannot believe the price of them these days.

I also have a question, my psychiatrist is about to put me on mood stabilizers this friday and im just wondering if i will need to pay for my anti depressants and mood stabilizer separately? or could i pay for both of them together in a bundle kind of way? because £15 is a lot of money each month if separately.

Thank you.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

hi

if i remember correctly
the prescription payment is per item
so if u getting 2 items u pay for 2x£7.65

if u need prescriptions more then 4 times in 3 months
its better to get a prepayment certificates

more details here
http://www.nhs.uk/nhsengland/Healthc...tioncosts.aspx

also
if you takes these medication regularly
you might want to ask the psychitrist if its possible to write you a larger supply on the prescription
so you don't need to pay that many times

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Thanks Smilie, that is shocking isn't it!, with the anti depressants i get 28 tablets per month im not sure about the mood stabilizers yet, it works out a lot of money per year.

When i see the doctor and psychiatric ill just ask them what are the options.

If i could i would stop taking them now!.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

All l can say is thank god l do not have to pay for the 10 different drugs l have to take each day.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Ah, the joys of having a GP registered in Wales... </smug>

Mind you, I can't see our free prescriptions lasting much longer.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

£7.65 is per item.

If you are taking certian medicines long term and have to pay you can pay a lump sum and get all prescription "free", my mum did this before she retired and she saved herself a lot of £'s

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

hi there

you can also pay by monthly direct debit rather than by a lump sum payment

also ask the psychiatrist if ur mood stabilisers are a non cost perscription item on the nhs and u might not have to pay for them, i'm not sure if they are or not.

you can also ask a cpn or mental health social worker who will be part of ur assessment team are there any charities who can assist with a one off payment to pay for maybe a 3 month exemption certificate to help u with the costs in the short term.

Juliex

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

It's worth a try, but many GP's are afraid to be accused of over prescribing.

It's also worth seeing if you are exempt from prescription charges, like myself, as this is granted regardless of income.

This link gives some more information.

http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Free...scriptions.htm

What makes you think that Russ?

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Possibly the same reason a lot of people are saying the same thing in Scotland. The pot isn't bottomless; free prescriptions for all means someone else is missing out on some other service. The devolved administrations have so far managed to avoid cutting public spending in quite so obvious a way as has occurred in England and across the UK in non-devolved areas but the creative accounting can't go on forever. Wales cannot raise its own tax; Scotland can, a bit, but never has ... the maths is irrefutable. Westminster gives them less, they have to spend less. Some time in the next couple of years the excreta is going to impact upon the air cooling device in spectacular fashion and hard choices will have to be made about which bits of our socialist utopia we want to go without. Given that the poorest and most vulnerable in our society were already able to avoid all, or some, of their prescription costs, the universal free prescription could very easily be made to look untenable.

I predict this will all kick off in Scotland just in time for the independence referendum, so the SNP can accuse nasty London of choking off the cash flow that rightfully belongs to Scotland. ;)

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

This is exactly it. The NHS in Wales is generally accepted as being crap. Service to patients is deteriorating. The work that the medical staff do is not in question but waiting times and delays are on the rise. Poor inter-departmental communication means files and information goes missing. Nobody takes ownership of issues. I don't think it's a coincidence that this has occurred for roughly the same amount of time that we've had free prescriptions.

Don't get me wrong, it's very helpful and it means those people who may have previously been unable to afford prescriptions now getting the treatment they deserve. But we pay for it in other ways.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

They say that approx 80% of people get free prescriptions anyway, with exemptions, low income schemes etc. If you take off the money lost to fraud and administrative costs, it probably doesn't cost much more to make it universally free.

Having said that, when the Universal Credit comes in, people on it will no longer automatically get free prescriptions like they did with Income Support, Income Based Jobseekers Allowance etc.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Then factor in the people who will make-up ailment just to score free prescription painkillers and those who ask for meds just to hoard them, and the cost soon rises.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

i dont think many do that as the shops still manage to sell painkillers here in wales despite the scripts being free and only costing from 16p a packet anyway ;) add to that the decreased time off sick as people actualy can afford to get and take meds to get better I really dont see it is place to try and save money

As to NHS being crap on Wales i dont find it so they save my life on a regular baisis ( asthma )

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

As I said the medical staff here are as good as anywhere. But the administration, the pen pushers, the 'suits', all seem to have deteriorated in quality.

---------- Post added at 22:39 ---------- Previous post was at 22:16 ----------

In any case the painkillers you can only get from the doctor are a lot stronger than over-the-counter versions.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

How about lets stop giving the registered drug addicts their fix for free.
Why should they get Methodone for nothing when others who need life saving drugs like Ventolin or Cancer treatment drugs have to pay for them.?:mad::mad::td:

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

I'd hazard a guess so they don't go out breaking and entering or mugging little old ladies to buy smack with and properly used can get people of drugs + it's pretty cheap IIRC.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Balls. The whole Methadone program is a scam that does sod all in reducing drug use. All it does is sets up a free fix that can be sold on by users with people dumped on the system for years with no exit strategy.

If it was used as part of a plan to reduce the dosage over several months with the aim of getting clean then it might have a place but right now it is just a huge money spinner for pharmacys.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

That's why I said used properly, it wasn't being used properly 10 years ago when I worked in drug rehab, things are bound to be worse now.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

I worked with a Guy whose Brother in law was a registered addict and he used to sell his methodone to buy heroin! :erm:
When he stayed with my wokmate he went through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and necked all the pills that the family dog had been prescribed!! Just no helping some people i guess! :mad::td:

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

It's either to highly priced, or free, neither work in the long term

I often wonder how many people don't bother to pickup their prescriptions because they simply can't afford it.

Of course, a fairer system would base the price of a prescription on a persons annual wage, verifiable via their national insurance number, in some ways, similiar to the income tax system.

Out of work, on benefits or retired - Free
Upto 10k a year - £1.50 per item.
10k to 20k a year - £3.00 per item
20k to 30k a year - £4.00 per item

And so on and so forth, with discounts available if the medication is for children, disabled or the elderly etc.

Plus a cap/maximum of £5 per item.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Fairer still would be the pharmaceutical companies not charging £10 for something that costs 20p to manufacture. Then perhaps prescriptions would be affordable for all.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

[QUOTE=budwieser;35421485]


''' went through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and necked all the pills that the family dog had been prescribed!! ''


Please tell me you are having a Giraffe :erm::erm::erm:

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

[QUOTE=djfunkdup;35421555]Doubt it, Ketamine is quite popular and that's meant for horses...

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

That to.

Also makes me wonder just how many cures they've found for common diseases/issues, which they haven't released a drug for, just so they can profit from "treatments" instead.

I know, sounds like a grand conspiracy, but I wouldn't put it past the big companies to do just that.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

How would they keep it quiet?

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

I somehow doubt that there is a conspiracy within drug companies to withhold details of cures found. There are simply too many people involved to make that viable. However, they have been accused of profiteering from treatments available and also selling drugs to overseas markets to the detriment of sufferers in the UK.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

[QUOTE=djfunkdup;35421555]Nope. True mate.:(

---------- Post added at 19:46 ---------- Previous post was at 19:45 ----------

[QUOTE=TheDaddy;35421567]A friend of mines mate took Ketamine on a night out and next morning he discovered he was missing a finger and had no idea of how! True again.:(

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

It's also an excellent painkiller for humans with the slight side effect of making you think the curtain round the bed is trying to eat you. :erm: :shocked:

It might cost 20p to manufacture but the development and testing costs are astronomical.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

I understand that drug companies spend huge sums on research, development, trials and initial production costs. However it does irk me that as unit costs decrease, the cost of the drug does not. They have manufactured certain products for decades and the cost of those must surely have been be amortised by now.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Actually, drug patents only last 20 years from the patenting date (at the beginning of the development process), so the commercial life averages out at around 10 years, due to development, testing, and approval time taking between 8 to 12 years (for example, the side-effect that became Viagra was first noticed in 1991 came to market in 1998, but the drug it was based on had begun development in 1987).

Also, only about 1 in 20 developments actually get to market (my bro-in-law was a Research Director at Pfizer).

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

The annoying thing is, if you look up most of the commonly prescribed drugs in the BNF the ones you're likely to get cost a couple of pounds at most - yet you still have to pay the full amount.

I'd be much happier if it was a cap of £7.65 rather than free prescriptions, that way when I need a POM that only costs £2.00 then that's all I have to pay.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

The money they spend on drug testing is eye-watering too. I've been on 8 medical research courses over the years and on each session I've been paid anything from £400 to £3500. Bear in mind on each course there were 30-40 people taking part and were done in phases so the same thing (with different people) was done 7 or 8 times. So to pay all of use and still make a profit, the NHS would have been spending a lot.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

The average cost of prescriptions is higher than the prescription charge so there is some subsidy from the health service. I know what you mean thought, I have found that occasionally I have been prescribed something and the pharmacist has informed they can dispense it over the counter at a lower cost. But one way or another, the drugs bill has to be paid, either in taxes or prescription charges.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Same thing happened at a hostel I worked at, one of the residents came back minus a finger and no idea where he'd left it.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

That's something I wouldn't dare do, even if my health permitted it.* Remember those students who turned black a few years back? Didn't some die? It's a good job that people like yourself do so though, as someone has to test the new drugs to see if they are ok for human use.

Aren't people with various health conditions barred from doing this on safety grounds?

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

Notwithstanding the amount of investment, research, development, testing et al. The profits made by pharmaceutical companies are huge. Surely they could find it in their hearts to reduce their margins by a fraction to enable vital medication for the most vulnerable. Oh no, I woke up. Shame they won't.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

All studies come with risks but the incident you're thinking of was a one-off. Nothing like that had happened for or after so it is very safe. I've certainly not had any side effects.

They usually only want healthy people but some ailments are permitted. But those without health issues will find themselves invited on to more studies.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

I can't believe this!

So! the doctor is gradually taking me off my current tablets by reducing the milligrams in the medication, 1 week of 45MG 1 week is 30MG, 1 week of 15MG then the new ones in week 4!, £23 it is! luckily this is just for 1 month, i wouldn't mind but i already have a months supply of 45MG!.

Re: £7.65 now for a prescription?!
 

This is where the rip off for the consumer comes. Technically it is still part of the same treatment on a reducing dosage, yet each different dose costs the same. Why for example won't my doctor prescribe 3 months worth of my blood pressure medication at a time? The most I can get is 8 weeks. :fit:

They cannot claim the cost of a prescription being an issue when one injection treatment a colleague needs every 3 weeks costs £1,500 but she gets this for free. This is a new treatment needed by a tiny minority of people with extreme allergic sensitivity.