End this unfair tax on illness

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Last month, ahead of the autumn budget, the NPA called for prescription charges to be scrapped. Its chair, Olivier Picard, branded the levy a “cruel tax on illness” and a “national scandal”. The Royal College of Pharmacy backed the call, also urging the Government to abolish charges. That should come as little surprise. Prescription charges were abolished in Wales in 2007 and Northern Ireland in 2010, with Scotland following in 2011.

The prescription tax, as I have always described it to patients, generates around £730m in revenue for the Government in England. But at what cost?

I have long felt that it creates a barrier between pharmacists, as healthcare professionals, and patients trying to access an NHS service. Then there is the administrative burden: Where do I sign? Do I sign my own name? Can you sign it for me? And the anxiety when patients cannot afford the medicines they need.

What is the impact on patients’ health – and on NHS costs – when they cannot afford their prescriptions? Nobody should have to choose between medicines and paying for heating or food. Yet community pharmacists are left as de facto tax collectors, repeatedly explaining to disgruntled patients that they do not keep the money.

So, what is the great fear about abolishing the tax? Is it that reckless people will order piles of medicines they do not need? The evidence does not point to a significant increase in prescription volume as a direct result of removing charges. In Scotland, growth held steady during the first year after abolition and slowed in the years that followed.

Is it the cost? Modest adjustments to income tax could easily make up the revenue shortfall and would be largely unnoticeable in people’s monthly salaries.

Abolishing prescription charges is simply the right thing to do. No question.