MSE News: Revealed: 800,000 could have saved with a prescription 'season ticket'...

I've got mine.

I really should get better organised and start buying the 3-monthly ones. They cost slightly more per month than the 12-month ones, but with a bit of care you can save more money.

Just as your card is about to run out, order one of everything from your doctor. That should keep you going for while, and you can leave off ordering the new card for at least a month.

So you have a choice, you can decide you are going to be sick multiple times in the next year, so buy a prepayment cert. Or do you decide that I was sick a couple of times last year but this year I am not going to be sick at all or I am going to be sick an awful lot? Unless you have any knowledge that you are going to be needing a prescripton (many of which ongong ailments have entitlements to free prescriptions) then how do you know in advance that you need a cert?

Obviously, if you have an ailment not covered by free prescriptions then maybe you do need a cert. But I suspect that if you have an ailment which gets free prescriptions then you will have to apply for them monthly (13 per year). But if your illness is not one of those which entitles you to free presciptions then you will be prescribed them every 2 months which would only be 6/7 times per year which is not sensible for a prepayment cert.

I look forward to someone telling me I am wrong. But I am not holding my breath. Before I was entiltled to over 60 free prescriptions, I got them anyway due to (well who really cares besides me!) & can only get them monthly, my son's prescriptions (not available free) for which he needs to pay every 56 days (6.5 times per year) whoops not enough to get a cert.

So with this many failures - some pharmasists are letting their customers down major style or the figures are just plain wrong. Unless we are able to see into the future how do we know after being healthy that we are suddenly going to need so much extra medication?

When I first got a PPC I was happy too even though I didn't know if I'd need enough items to make it pay for itself (I already had some repeats)

Budgeting wise it was better for me to pay £10.40 over 10 months than have to find the prescription fee an unknown number of times possibly at short notice. Which would have been much harder for me than managing a series of planned payments.

Sometimes money saving isn't about the black & white figures but being happy that paying for convenience is the best option overall.

I've got the double whammy of statins and HBP.