Prescription Charges: Meeting with Minister at the Department of Health

This meeting was as a result of a letter sent to the Secretary of State for Health by the Chairs of several All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG) including Respiratory Health, Parkinson’s, Motor Neurone Disease, HIV and AIDS, Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia, and Heart Disease. APPGs are groups of MPs from all the political parties who agree to work together on certain topics they think are important. The letter asked the Secretary of State for Health to review the medical exemption list which sets out the conditions for which people do not have to pay for prescription charges.

The Prescription Charges Coalition is an alliance of 40 organisations concerned with the detrimental impact of prescription charges on people of working age with long-term conditions. Crohn’s and Colitis UK are Joint Chairs of the Coalition along with Parkinson’s UK.

We believe that the list of medical exceptions, unchanged (apart from the addition of cancer in 2009) since its introduction in 1968, is severely out of date and illogical. Whilst it was first created in 1968 with input from the medical profession, a lot can change in medical advancement in 50 years! And we believe that people with long term conditions shouldn’t be in a position where they have to pay high costs for the life-saving medication they rely on to stay healthy and active.

Alongside Stephen McPartland MP, who chairs the Respiratory Health APPG, we conveyed our points about the unfairness of the current exemption criteria to the Minister. The burden of prescription charges falls heavily on those of working age, with long term conditions, and we know that many people with long term conditions struggle to pay for their prescriptions, often resulting in serious consequences because they haven’t taken their medicine.

Lord Prior took our points on board, and seemed sympathetic to the issues faced by people with long term conditions, but made no specific commitments. It’s clear that the Coalition will have to continue to fight on this issue. That’s why it’s vital that as many people as possible continue to raise this issue with their MP so that the Government are given a clear message that they must act.

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