MSE News: England's prescription and dental charges frozen

brook2jack

In Wales dental check ups are free for under 25 s and over 65s. However this means there is no money available in the lhb budget for orthodontics , home visits, and other specialist care available in England.

There is no 16 week waiting list requirement in Wales so patients often have much longer waiting lists for hospital proceedures than in England.

There is free prescriptions at the moment but all 7 lhbs in Wales are massively in debt. The local chemists here report a masssive increase in prescriptions being dispensed for trivial things such as paracetamol,calamine lotion etc and one wonders how much longer this will continue.

brook2jack

I forgot to say the biggest impact has been not being able to refer across the border any more. If your child in is agony and needs ga removal of a tooth over the border in England they will have that done within two weeks. Just over the border in Wales ........ One year.

xycom1

brook2jack wrote: »

In Wales dental check ups are free for under 25 s and over 65s. However this means there is no money available in the lhb budget for orthodontics , home visits, and other specialist care available in England.

There is no 16 week waiting list requirement in Wales so patients often have much longer waiting lists for hospital proceedures than in England.

There is free prescriptions at the moment but all 7 lhbs in Wales are massively in debt. The local chemists here report a masssive increase in prescriptions being dispensed for trivial things such as paracetamol,calamine lotion etc and one wonders how much longer this will continue.

Do you have a source or reference for that? ISTR that all the reports and research that I've seen indicate that there has been no massive increase in trivial prescriptions - something that seems quite unbelievable.

IMO, everyone should pay, even if just a trivial amount e.g. £1 per item, capped at a limited amount - e.g. £7 per month, etc.

brook2jack

Both ancedotal from our three local pharmacists who report scripts being issued for things which people would have bought for pennies before and from closely watching the published budget of our old lhb. (the new lhbs only started October 2009).

The budgets for medicines/ pharmacys were well into the red and that is not due to dispensing expensive medicines most of which the lhb refuses to fund which the exception of lucentis which has a seperate fund. All 7 lhbs in Wales bar Betsi Cadwallader ,which is just about breakeven, are in the red budgetwise.