When, during the general election campaign, David Cameron promised not to cut NHS spending, it made me feel quite ill!
A man about to take charge of a country on the verge of bankruptcy was promising to match the deranged levels of overspending on a system that most of us think is failing patients on numerous fronts: nurses no longer nurse, Third World cleaners have brought their traditional standards of hygiene with them, compassion has been consigned to the history books, and superbugs battle each other for the right to attack patients’ bodies. Meanwhile GPs earn the sort of dosh you might expect if you were a leading American plastic surgeon – and, in return, they can’t be arsed to leave their cushy surgeries to actually visit anyone at home.
Of all the public sector disasters wrought by succeeding generations of half-witted, greedy, conscienceless politicians, the NHS probably takes the biscuit (twice a day, with a glass of water).
But anyone who uses the NHS – i.e. all of us at some stage or other – knows that money is being pissed away all over the place.
For instance, I’ve spent the last twenty years shoveling truckloads of pills down my throat for a variety of deeply boring medical conditions, for most of which I am solely responsible. During most of those years I paid the standard rate for my prescriptions, and was relaxed about doing so – after all, I’d certainly put enough money into the slot machine to expect the occasional pay-out. And then someone told me that only one in five UK prescriptions is paid for.
As it currently stands, 88% of all prescriptions are free of charge!
Yes, old people get their meds for free (no matter how rich they might be), and children, of course (no matter how many millions Mummy and Daddy have amassed). But even taking all that into account, it doesn’t explain how we get up to the ludicrous figure of 88% (and remember, the prescription charge already entails a massive subsidy on the actual cost of many medicines).
I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes five years’ ago, which is the less serious form of the condition, i.e. it can be treated with tablets rather than injections. Some 2.8 million people have been diagnosed with diabetes in the UK, and it’s estimated that a further 850,000 have the condition, but don’t know it. Type 2 diabetes is usually the result of an unhealthy lifestyle: we fatties are particularly vulnerable. About 10% of the total suffer from the far more serious Type 1 version, which strikes victims through no fault of their own: their bodies simply can’t produce insulin.
A year after I was diagnosed, my local pharmacist informed me that, as a diabetic, I didn’t need to pay for my prescriptions (my GP is probably too wealthy to bother about these trifling details). I don’t mean that I didn’t have to pay for medication related to diabetes: I no longer had to pay forany prescribed medicines.
Two things made me ponder the fairness of this deliriously generous dispensation.
First, a friend from school whom I’d lost touch with for many years told me his son had been diagnosed early on with Type 1 diabetes. Soon afterwards, I spent an hour in a corridor at our nearest hospital waiting to be seen by a diabetes specialist.
Apart from the fact that at least half of those waiting for treatment appeared to have only a rudimentary grasp of English, the other thing that struck me was the far more lopsided division between thin and fat - and, yes, I belonged in the latter , far larger (in all senses of the word) category. I began wondering why we fatties shouldn’t pay prescription charges, given that we were most likely the architects of our own problems. Given that we have already demonstrated a lack of willpower and common sense, wouldn’t it be good for us to be regularly reminded of our propensity for self-harm by having to go through the painful process of shelling out cash whenever our meds run out? Wouldn’t it be good for us to habitually recall the fact that bad behaviour has a price?
I know I sound like one of those deranged left-wing fascist health eugenicists who only want to give medical treatment to healthy people, but, in the name of common sense, where is the logic in rewarding people for not looking after themselves?
Make the payment of prescription charges entirely dependent on income (£15,000 per annum should do it) for all age groups (most children have parents who earn money, and why do we assume that all old people are poor?). If we’re going to exempt any of the resultant charge-payers, we should concentrate on those genuine victims who haven’t been agents of their own misfortune – i.e. my friend’s Diabetes 1 child would be paid for, but I, an overweight, middle-aged Diabetes 2 “sufferer”, would have to cough up (as it were).
And before there are howls of anguish from the more tender-hearted amongst you, those of us who get through a lot of pills can pay just over £100 a year to cover all our prescriptions, which strikes me as a very good deal.
I’d certainly put enough money into the slot machine to expect the occasional pay-out.Towson plastic surgeon
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