Its not the patients bankrupting the NHS its the many levels of managers and contractors that pay themselves extortiante amounts for ghost contract.

I think as good an idea as this is by the OP, its just the tip of the iceberg in relation to the services of this country being bled dry by idiots. Until the whole system is re-styled, they will never fix any of the problems. Stop giving out jobseekers allowance to people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months. Give them milk and bread vouchers. You want fags and a flat screen TV? Get you rass out to work and earn it like every other tax paying person in the country does. I read the constant sob stories in the press of "but i only want to be treated as an equal" and "i have a right to do what i want with my benefit money" - no you bloody well dont. It isnt your money and you shouldnt have it. Get out and make something for yourself. Sorry for the rant, but it annoys me something chronic when i see these wasters wandering around town when im on my lunch break. I just despair for the next generation, as im 31 now and i see the idiots i went to school with have never grown up and done anything in the world, they have just copied their parents into a life of benefits and handouts. The first politician that promises to fix this problem will get my vote whether they are Tory, Labour, UKIP, or the Monster Raving Looney Party.

When is enough, enough?

​wow i will tell you when enough is enough when over a million people are not using food banks because of sanctions when low paid workers are payied a living wage when the mps do something about tax dodging companys and when the sick and disabled are not being hung out to dry but yeah i am envious of that £60 to £70 aweek they have to live off and by the way i will not be viewing your reply so dont bother

excellent post, one of my big gripes is that our government is paying 30 times the actual price to supply these cheap items on prescription. i go through lots of children's paracetamol and ibuprofen but buy them from home bargains for£1 a bottle. they would cost the nhs maybe 6 times that. wasted money.

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​and what about us Rastafarian, alcoholic, crackheads?

we want equality, when do we want it? meh

And Tic Tacs

Same with VitD. Buy high dose vit D on Amazon.

[quote=thomasleep]Just how does this save the NHS from going bust? you cannot state which brands(or generic) you want to be filled on a prescriptio

This is because the NHS and community pharmacies are two separate entities. A GP prescribes a medication, the pharmacy dispenses it. The NHS pays the pharmacy fees (I think around 90p) for dispensing the item, and they also reimburse them for the cost of the medicine. So if the pharmacy is supplying a paracetamol costing 20p to buy then NHS are having to pay £1.10 to the pharmacy for dispensing that one paracetamol! So if people who get free prescriptions go buy their own paracetamols the NHS will save a lot of money!!

Voting hot whilst in hospital on an iv drip the ultimate irony

What if they are a gluten intolerant vegetarian?

Bread and milk isn't an adequate diet people would become malnourished.

And what about heating and clothing and toilet roll and transport costs to get to job, toothpaste so their teeth don't fall out and shampoo so they are presentable.

What about if you wanting to dictate how a person spends their social security money is fascism.

That people are free to spend the money how they choose has been enshrined in the legislature since it's inception for very good reasons, and the amount granted is tweaked by an uprating system. Indeed it's common practice for benefit documentation to explicitly state that people can spend the money how they see fit.

It's not North Korea yet boys!

Too right

Avoid ibuprofen if you have asthma or gastrointestinal problems.

Nope the NHS was one of the cheapest, most efficient healthcare systems in world in 2014 rated No.1 by the commonwealth fund : http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2014/jun/mirror-mirror

The NHS is not being bankrupted it's being underfunded, since the Conservatives took office the UK has cut the percentage of overall budget and now pays 2-3% less per head GDP than our european rivals (9% vs 12-13%), and they refuse to pay more. This is a "by design" bankrupting and Health Minister Jeremy Hunt "wrote the book" on privatising the NHS. Literally, he's co author of "Direct Democracy: An Agenda For A New Model Party" which calls for the 'denationalisation' of the NHS in favour of an insurance based model.



Aswell as underfunding, conservatives top down reorganisation also introduced expensive internal market systems. They are expensive because a) they introduce swathes of private profiteering into the system b) private companies rarely live up to their tenders and often there's no oversight (eg ATOS) c) all the additional layers of bureaucracy required to manage, review, oversee and administer contracts.

The most filthy part, is the underfunding of social care, causing a knock on effect to NHS hospitals who are now choked up with people who formerly had residential care homes, or home support to go to. Hence the A&E bed blocking crisis this winter.

Another interesting fact is for every £1 invested in the NHS, the treasury sees a return of £1.60. This is because the cost of people being unwell to society (especially lost productivity) outweighs the cost of making them better.

So rather than blaming the well paid managers - like many industries there are a lot - who are very well paid when the NHS was rated No.1 just 3 years ago - blame the Conservative party who are on an ideological mission to give Britain an American style health system.

A system where the only people who benefit are the senior executives of profit making companies, and the very wealthy to whom extremely expensive healthcare makes no difference.

​ very well said that

Good post op! Just a shame the scroungers of Society will carry on abusing the NHS as they are self centred morons who only think of what they can get from the system! Have some heat! !!

Isn't the prescription cost a subsidized flat rate based on your expected income, and the government negotiates prices un-related to the prescription cost?!
One problem with the NHS seems to be the need to reduce internal and external corruption. You'd think it would be priority number one for as they lose billions to it, and spend a very tiny fraction of that on a department to investigate it (similar to HMRC and tax avoidance). I've read many stories of fake work from people and companies working in or for the NHS. The alternative is to privatize it like they do in the states, but that causes millions of people to go without healthcare because they can't afford it or can't get cover.

There's an interesting theoretical and/or literal side to that argument of yours still?.

Hmmmmmmmmm.

DOW!!, hahahahahaha.

That's irony for you?. :-(

Ps.
Galpram 'stuffs' can be found in SAVERS Stores too (and for LESS than £1 too!).

That's double irony right there for you also ..... :-(

Yep!.

I saw that Program too, it was a 1 hour MoneySavingExpert TV Program Special!, if I recall well? (with Martin Lewis).

It was on last month sometime?.

And was VERY GOOD TOO!. :-)

There was a TV program on recently about medicines can't remember which Chanel, anyway there are some codes on the back of these medicines which are common to branded as well as the cheaper ones telling you the medicines are same regardless of costs. So cheaper is the same as buying the more expensive brands. Which I do.


https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/oct/03/do-branded-painkillers-work-better-than-cheaper-generic-ones-iboprofen-nurofen

Other facilities ? they're all slowing disappearing due to endless cutbacks from this **** government that shows no remorse whatsoever at the daily deaths that its lack of funding causes
.

Save the NHS from bankruptcy .....with a government focused on selling it off to the private sector to line its own pockets I don't think that there's much chance of that happening.

I Blame flip flops!

... "Tesco have 

Cold & Flu max strength capsules X 16 for £1.50 -..."

These are made by Galpram and can be commonly found in poundland etc.

The quality of GPs vary markedly but I have to say most of the GPs I've met are in the job trying their hardest to improve patients quality of life. The GPs at my surgery qualified before salaries took off. I'm pretty sure looking up peoples bums, would come second to being a hedge fund manager, as a career choice if it was all about the dosh.

I'm fortunate to live in a country where healthcare is free at the point of access - I never take that for granted and recently wrote a letter of thanks to my GP because of her enduring support.

So no sense of entitlement - but I believe in socialised healthcare and it was working very well in the UK until recently and rated . So please tell me Dr, from your point of view what is the most productive thing members of the public can do, actively, to curtail the asset stripping and privatisation of the NHS by this government?

Quite.

aà

NHS getting over charged with generics... someone's on the payroll. we shouldn't have to but let's do this​

Nhs needs to buy some, send it to everyone and fire all the doctors ( unnecessary expense anyway)

​Education.... Education..... Education. The uneducated need to be more aware of other facilities like pharmacies and minor treatment centres to get treatment rather than pitching up at ED for stupid stuff.

The issue is not paying £8.20 for paracetamol on prescription. It's when you are discharged from hospital say after a minor surgical procedure and medications like paracetamol are given to you for free. It costs the NHS 40 times what it costs you to buy it yourself from the supermarket so if you have it at home then refuse it (paracetamol/ibuprofen) from health care professionals. Really the government should get a grip on the pharmaceutical companies for allowing them to charge it.

You could save the NHS a thousand times more by eating more fruit and veg and doing exercise everyday. :man:

​The NHS pays pharmacies only £2.19 for a box of 100 Paracetamol. These random figures being pulled out from where the sun don't shine shows a lack of how the system works. Yes cutting back on Paracetamol prescribing may save a few pennies for the NHS however it is like comparing a crater hole being filled with a spade, and a very small one at that.

I will tweet lloyds and tell them that they are crooks!

​At last.....a post that makes sense.

For Brexit Voters, forget this and go just get the horse in the field by your house to give you a friendly lick on your forehead.

These pills were made by those "experts" you seem to hate...

I used to work in pharmacy and I can guarantee you that isn't where the money goes. It all goes to a manufacturer. In a huge amount of cases, the pharmacy doesn't even recover the cost of ordering the medicine in.

That, and the £8.20 charge goes back into the NHS. That's not pharmacy money. They don't get to keep that. The £8.20 fee is a contribution to the NHS, irrespective of the type of item - i.e., you get an inhaler that costs the pharmacy £90, or that pack of paracetamol, for the same price.

People buying cheap medication - when they can afford it - is a good thing. It won't save the NHS, but it's a damn good start.

Yes you are right. Still we should do what we can, one party will fund it properly and the other won't which is what it comes down to.

People need to eat healthier and do more exercise...the number of overweight people is shocking

I agree 100% ​

How about NHS staff getting paid full sick pay.

drugs produced for pennies sold for 8.20 is probably what's propping up the nhs.

I didn't say labour was the other option to be fair. Although I would think labour would be a bit tougher on millionaires and corporations who don't pay their share. Lets face it, the NHS has a lack of investment due to our government leaking money to the big boys in order to keep them happy.

That's laughable. The NHS in wales is in crisis and it's labour assembly government who decided that everyone should have free prescriptions, which is totally irresponsible!

The NHS should start charging for prescriptions in Wales. People are taking advantage, I've seen people get sudocrem, cotton wool and other stuff for free, not just medication. It's ridiculous.
They should at least charge a minimum fee.

NHS is broke & needs ripping up & restarting, not pumping money into a black hole in trying to fix it.
Gov. should give people an optional NI discount in return they take out a private policy to help take the stress off.
NHS patient treatment is fantastic once you get it, however there is to much pressure on GP's at the point of service.
Mental Health (this includes people suffering from Stress or need general counselling, etc.) has a lot to do with it & is an area that needs the biggest injection of cash with proper trained people. As it is, a lot just rock up at GP & unload their problems on them! I am lucky as we can see our GP same day, however Patients are screened to see if they do need an appointment or not.

Another option is change the way the NHS treat health issues. IE. I was eventually diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. It took nearly 2 yrs before I actually got insulin. I suffered bells palsy then huge loss of weight, endless neural pain eventually resulting in severe nerve damage, muscle wastage and cataracts in both eyes - result I was paralyzed and blind. I had to go private for cataract surgery as there was over a year waiting time through NHS but the real issue was down to the typical "see you in 2 - 3 months" appointment system as when you are ill without treatment or lets try this pill things quickly get worse and worse which results in more appointments and treatments with other doctors.
I ended up being stuck in a wheelchair for nearly 10 years and during this period I suffered from bacterial Keratitis while have treatment on my eyes and even though diagnosed I was sent home with steroid drops - result lost sight in 1 eye within 3 days and severely damaged cornea in other - because it was a Sunday. But all this started because they didn't treat my type 1 diabetes in a proper time frame so as not to cause further issues as well as incur the NHS a lot more money.

Thanks for posting OP.

Cracking deal! Voted HOT, HOT, HOT!

Unless you work in the NHS and understand the funding mechanisms I don't think you can truly appreciate the gravity of the current situation. If you can, read some STPs to get a feel for what we need to do over the next 5 years. One quick example in a small area is 'save £270 million, work together better and hope for a £65 million deficit at the end - best case scenario'. The NHS is imploding, and has been for a considerable amount of time. No amount of reorganisation (along the common cycle of centralisation/decentralisation) will fix it. It is an outdated social healthcare model that has no chance of ever working with the current funding mechanisms. You want a fully functioning NHS like you have grown to expect? Then you need to pay for it, either through more taxation (which is politically too difficult to take on and no one will want to do it), privatisation, or social health insurance more like mainland Europe.

I certainly don't believe the Western worlds economic crash was all to do with Labour, that was as large a lie sold by Cameron as those sold by Farage, Johnson, Duncan-Smith & Gove earlier this year. What I meant was that switching government would possibly prompt another reshuffle, and those are incredibly costly to the NHS. Politicians do not understand that reorganising such a large organisation takes years, and the drop in productivity whilst people work on changing how something is organised is enormous.

Sample extrapolation still has to reach significance. You will find that the majority of statistics out there are based on some form of sample because no-one has time to collect a millions of datapoints from millions of people. Unless the datapoints are already recorded for some reason (e.g. disease) the stats are based on a sample.

I would say it is that simple unless you believe that the 2008 crash, originating in the USA housing market, was Labour's fault...

Total and utter, ignorant balderdash. My wife came to the UK 6 years ago to work in medical research and in setting up collaborations with universities around the world. In bringing high fee-paying foreign students into this country, she's literally brought millions of pounds into the UK economy. She came on the relevant work visa, and we married two years ago. Immigration rules means she needs to be earning over 30-odd grand a year to remain here, until she completes the 5 year 'spouse visa' pathway. She's brought more money into this country than most people will earn in a lifetime. And yet you think she shouldn't be entitled to access NHS services because her passport isn't a UK one yet? In the relatively short time she's been here, she's brought in more money than you or I will probably earn in our lifetimes. And bear in mind that she's also paying tax and NI, plus spending money in this country, so is contributing financially to this country in a huge way when all said and done. Think on.

It's not that simple though. Granted 2004-10 saw a real upturn in NHS fortunes, going back to Labour now would probably be just as much bad news as it is with the Tories, just in different ways. What we really need is the NHS to be removed from political interference and its structure to be built around what is best for patients, not what is best for Whitehall.

Then she ends up at A&E costing the system a whole lot more. Good call by the GP IMO.

At least you're acknowledging they are, in fact, statistics - that's progress. But you haven't explained how they are being manipulated, nor offered a counter argument backed up with any evidence.

There are stats which are based on absolute fact, and then there are sample statistics. These are easily manipulated. You know this, but fail to acknowledge it because it doesn't suit your argument to do so. So please, feel free to continue to be condescending. It's all you have left.

At this stage you're arguing that statistics aren't actually statistics because you don't agree with them. I'm not sure how I can address that without condescension, sorry.

Condescension.....good counter argument.

I understand perfectly how statistics work, and I also understand how they are manipulated by governments, police forces, businesses etc. You seem to be in denial that this happens.

I don't think you understand how statistics work.

Sure. According to the very latest figures by the Office of National Statistics (as per end Q3 2016) 69.8% of women were in work. So, by simple mathematics, if 69.8% of women are working then 30.2% of women are not working (69.8% + 30.2% = 100%)

Link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/bulletins/uklabourmarket/dec2016

If 57% of Pakistani women do not work, this puts them well over the UK's National average of 30.2%. In fact, it would seem that twice as many Pakistani women stay at home when compared to the national average.

There could be many reasons for this - it could be cultural, male oppression, lack of education plus a myriad of other reasons. Equally, according to the most recent census data, 22% of Muslim women say they don’t speak English or don’t speak it well - which presumably restricts their employment options (Source: https://fullfact.org/immigration/22-muslim-women-say-they-dont-speak-english-or-dont-speak-it-well/ )

So, those are the facts and it's absolutely nothing to do with "xenophobia". You may not like them or agree with them, but nonetheless they are the facts.

HTH :wink:

You are moving backwards in our debate and are repeating points I have already addressed - not responding to my responses but pretty much ignoring them.

Also it's a bit rich for you to ask me what my plan is when I've been asking you for a while now what you mean by "complete decentralization". I still have no idea what your idea of "independent units" actually looks like, other than their qualities: fraud free, autonomic, minimally bureaucratic etc etc...

For reference, it would be to go after evaded taxes and restore social care funding which will already solve the majority of its financial issues, and then reassess there. There's always been fraud but you forget that the NHS was doing just fine until 2011 or so.

You know I don't actually disagree with you that we should go after fraud and create a more transparent structure, just that it's not the main reason for its problems and there are more effective things we should do first. I won't be continuing this debate, I don't think there is any point...

Probably because their husbands work? they are called housewives....the fact you singled them out shows your xenophobic side. Do you have figures for white women to hand? or is it JUST Pakistani Women?

It clearly says it's based on a sample, the sample cannot possibly be of those they haven't caught.
Why would any government admit to being inept, which is what they would essentially be doing if they say benefit fraud is high.

...it's a statistic. If you open the PDF, the first thing you read is:

"Fraud and Error in the Benefit System: 2014/15 biannual National Statistics, Great Britain"

A - Explain why they can't?

B - Why would the Conservative government, who like to blame poor people for everything, want to under-report the amount of fraud in the system?

ttttd here is even *more* evidence of the "caring officers" within NHS. Over-charge by the drug companies of this sort does not happen without inside knowledge. There has to be colluding with the drug companies for monetary gain. There has got to be corruption within NHS for this to take place.How can this sort of exploitation of NHS have gone on unnoticed? Judge for your-self: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/nhs-overcharge-drugs-12000-hypercortisone-tablets-actavis-uk-company-a7478711.html

ttttd you stated, "What does your vision of independent units look like, except for the fantasy of not having any bureaucracy?"

It is not "fantasy" it is called being t-r-a-n-s-p-a-r-e-n-t. There is a *need* for NHS to be transparent. If £120 million goes to fraud there will be *more* in future unless this is stopped and---- stopped for good. The evidence is already there. There has to be checks and balances to put a stop to this ever mounting raids on NHS by the drugs companies and the inside colluding NHS officers. How else can you have this huge price increase rackets going on for years and years? How can nobody notice this within the NHS--- for years and years? This bureaucracy(bureau-crazy) business has got to go and be replaced by a transparent structure.
Luxury leads to poverty. We just can not afford the bureau-crazy in NHS: it has got to go. No fantasy. Just being practical.

If hotukd members want to help the NHS they siuld start by posting so many chocolate and booze deals :man:

Thank you for that nice comment, that made my day! I am feeling sorry for myself and being a bad patient...with tonsillitis of all things! Some may say that's karma though.

Save the NHS from bankruptcy stop voting tories

ttttd you stated, "Who is it that doesn't care about the NHS, other than the current government? Is there anyone actually within the NHS who does not care about the NHS?"

Fraud means that this was an inside job with those in knowledge who stood to gain from it. So those that were involved in fraud were they caring for NHS?
You criticize the current Government. But what is your plan for saving the NHS?
Please present your plan for saving the NHS with references, links.
Thank-you very much!

Your patients are lucky to have you. Keep up the good work.

You could go down that road, and give patients an ultimatum, and sometimes that is appropriate, so if a patient on strong Pain killing medicine says they need something stronger...generally my ears **** up, as they are asking for morphine often, and yes it's appropriate to say no you can't have morphine for your sciatica, or indeed you can't have antibiotics, or you can't have "something to help you sleep".

However the patient who had liquid form antibiotics is 18, she has probably only started coming to the GP alone in the last year or two, maybe less, and me or someone else has to try to maintain a relationship with that patient, and banging my fist off the desk and saying I WILL NOT GIVE YOU THIS MEDICINE and falling out with them them first time I meet them isn't likely to encourage her to come back. So when she catches chlamydia (and says she isn't going back to that GP because I was unpleasant and made her feel bad, and didn't help her) and so remains untreated, spreads it around, and ultimately becomes infertile and costs the NHS thousands, in treating her contacts and treating her complications, because she didn't feel able to come back the cost of those antibiotics may seem insignificant. Or when she develops a mental health problem, and doesn't feel she can talk to me, and that then becomes an enduring mental illness, and she doesn't ask for help, and reaches a point where she can no longer work, lives on benefits and contributes nothing to society.....then the £59 for liquid medication doesn't seem like such a big deal. Whilst I appreciate these are generalisations, I know the patient population well where I work, in an area of deprivation, and those scenarios will very possibly occur, and so sometimes you need to play the long game. Perhaps it doesnt always seem like it, but GPs try hard to maintain a good relationship with patients, because they do want patients to present early, with their STI, their cancer etc. They do want you to come and have your smear, your blood pressure check, your diabetes check, yes for your own health, but in the long run to save the NHS money. So there needs to be a bit of compromise and goodwill to get patients to engage with the healthcare system, which in the long term is cost saving. Unfortunately long gone are the days of the doctor says do this and the patient says....certainly doctor. But if that apparent compromise or giving in as some people seem to see it, turns my patient into a demanding patient, i.e the antibiotics patient thinks if she digs her heels in every time she comes in, she will get what she wants, then that quickly becomes apparent, and at that point you stop it in its tracks.

Sometimes you need to accept that no matter how irritated it makes you feel, seeing patients is not a battle and if is you shouldn't be dealing with them, and sometimes, as in this case, you need to make short term or one off concessions for a longer term gain, which is getting them to engage with you, and patients talk you know, so if that patient goes away satisfied, she may then say to her mum, friend, sister, whatever who has been putting off coming in because she doesn't like going to the doctors, that I was ok, and listened to her, and so that other person may then feel able to come in and tell me about something. And again we might be able to nip something in the bud, and ultimately require less resources.

You might think your GP looks bored or uninterested, but there is a lot going on under there besides just signing your precription. I think most of us are thinking....all the time, what is best for the patient, but also where is this going to go, if I do this or that, we think about the long term too, and how the decisions we make with you/about you are going to pan out, and yes I guess what kind of patient might we turn you into if we do or do not do something. And the issue of cost is not at the top of the list, and I don't think it's appropriate for it to be, otherwise I don't do my job to the best of my ability. But it's there, lurking. It always is.


Oh, and BTW Master G.....I am not a sir, and as you will find, most of the Gp's in the UK are not.

Perhaps if the opinionated experts on here put as much passion about paracetamol into their kids education 2/3's wouldn't be obese sending the bill for diabetes and further complications into the billions, getting smashed and either using up police resources or clogging up A+E most of the week due to binge-drinking.

Paracetamol??
Nice job Mums and Dads of the UK, your killing our NHS!

My doc would never give these on prescription. Ever. Seems strange if it happens...

The main issue with the NHS is funding on a basic level. People want high standards out of low funding. Its pretty much doomed at the current rate. Unless people accept much lower standards given funding.

This is not a stat, it's an estimation based on a sample of fraud found. You're assuming that,
A. The government has any idea how much fraud is actually being carried out. Given the nature of fraud, they're not likely to.
And,
B. That the government would be honest about it even if they did know.

I have an offbeat solution for the NHS crisis though dont think politicians or pharma companies will like it.

NHS floats its own pharma company which manufactures all drugs which have come off patent and only those are allowed on NHS prescriptions. There will still be some drugs which are in patents but will reduce the costs significantly.

NHS has its own Research and development to come out with new drugs which will be tested ethically and not just to line pharma execs pockets.

NHS enjoys excellent reputation worldwide, we start selling all these drugs to the rest of the world and turn our beloved NHS into a self sustaining entity

I have to say I agree with the tablets or nothing. According to the NHS website, self treatment for tonsillitis:

"Over-the-counter painkillers, such as paracetamol and ibuprofen, can help relieve painful symptoms such as a sore throat."

If someone is suffering from tonsilitis and needs pain relief the how can they forget to take painkillers? :confused:

Whoooa..... she insisted on liquid? You are the one prescribing. Just say "tablets or nothing" What's wrong with you? You, sir, appear to be part of the problem.

You have a very strange idea of what's going on with the NHS right now. Who is it that doesn't care about the NHS, other than the current government? Is there anyone actually within the NHS who does not care about the NHS?

"Total decentralization" - what does that even mean? The American system before ACA? I got news for you buddy, it was a bureaucratic nightmare because nothing was organized or co-ordinated...

"Independent units" what on earth are you talking about? What does your vision of independent units look like, except for the fantasy of not having any bureaucracy?

You stated, "Actually the real cost to the NHS (on the scale of billions) is the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which devolved (or decentralized as you put it) financial decisions to the regional level. Now each region has it's own bureaucracy and overhead has shot up".

The NHS system needs a complete overhaul. Retaining regional bureaucracy is not good enough.
Regional level has *also* to be decentralized. Unless there is *total* decentralization and complete *removal* of bureaucracy - incompetence,wastage,fraud will be the norm. They must function as *independent* units with *individual* managers:
"Proprietorship turns sand into gold." A person working on his own account, he can turn sand into gold, but a person working for others' account, that is not possible. He will be slow. He will be slow because the purpose is that "Why shall I work so hard?
What is happening is that nobody cares for NHS because they think that it is not mine so why care? Let the thing go on whatever breaks,steals,wastes not my problem. When something is yours you naturally work harder to make it a success. There *has* to be incentive.

Actually the real cost to the NHS (on the scale of billions) is the Health and Social Care Act 2012 which devolved (or decentralized as you put it) financial decisions to the regional level. Now each region has it's own bureaucracy and overhead has shot up.

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-under-coalition-government

£120m is not nothing as you said. But we need to choose which battles we fight. You won't save £120m from cracking down on dodgy dealings because it costs money do crack down. So do you want to save less than £120m or billions?

You need to fix the major problems before you go chasing pennies.

You say, "With a fraud level of £120m, it forms 0.1% of the NHS budget. This is well within acceptable parameters - fixing this won't save the NHS"
Luxury leads to poverty. You have save every penny to make NHS accountable. Agreed, £120 million is not going to save the entire NHS but it *can* create employment opportunity to thousands student nurses. Besides, £120 million is just the tip of the Ice Burg. We do not exactly know how deep is the fraud problem -yet. Lets not forget some MPs who were involved in the expenses scandal for many many many years. Shove this £120 million under the carpet and forget it as insignificant? no. Luxury leads to poverty. The amount of loss means that taxpayers will see increase in taxes.

You are highly critical of Daily Mail. But - it has covered some interesting news also.
This Increase in Tax proposal is mentioned by Jeremy Hunt:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4031336/Jeremy-Hunt-believes-families-money-away-like-pensions.html

My own conviction is:
The sanguine proposal however, would be to *decentralize* the Bureaucratic NHS into smaller units each with responsible individual managers. This is the way forward for the future of NHS. £120 million fraud loss was because of centralized bureaucracy. Luxury leads to poverty.

I wish Brexit article 50 would happen sooner :disappointed:

When I wrote to the Labour Secretary For Work And Pensions, his secretary replied to me saying I could get a loan. Yeah right, when a large profit is being made on a £4000 qualification cost, that could probably be done for under £1000 (the price being made-up based on salary expectations of all of £22K or some lame figure post-qualification)? The problem isn't the benefits part of the system - the problem is PRIVATE PROFIT being made from the parts of the system that USED TO BE taxpayer funded and USED to actually HELP. Then the corrupt politicians LYING that private = efficient!

I was prompted to write because as soon as I got (barely) well-enough to attend a course that (realistically, for once) promised to get me employed, via teaching above-and-beyond the exam, in order to make people GENUINELY-employable for the specific role... their government funding got CUT. By New Labour.

I made the point that they could give £thousands to people in handouts, and WOULD do so, inevitably. That it was a completely-false economy when those people would be paying back more in tax in just 9-12 MONTHS than they would take in benefits in TWO YEARS - IF they could still go on the course. Plus, the reply from the secretary of the Secretary was so patronising - telling me what I already knew, as if I'd been too lazy or stupid to look at all my options already... Guess who the REAL lazy-stupid demographic is?

If this really happens (and I'm not saying it does not), it shows how taken for granted for the NHS is and how a little compulsion may be well overdue, not just in the patients but in the Drs who prescribe such things.

http://www.medicinewaste.com/campaign

Might be of interest - but it will take more than this to sort the NHS out.

Could it be those patients who are incensed at buying OTC paracetamol were hoping for something a little stronger eg co codamol ? :smirk:
Yes that is sometimes the case, but not often.....most of these types of people have a fairly elaborate and over-complicated story prepared to get stronger drugs!

I don't think we are thinking buying paracetamol is going to save the NHS, I think it's just being used as an example which most people can relate to.....e.g they know how much it costs in the shops, and so can appreciate that there is a massive difference between the cost via a shop and via a GP.

Of course you will not expect me to say I am paid too much, I work damn hard for it. Without going into the finer points of my salary, and bearing in mind it varies from area to area and country to country - I had 51 patient contacts last Monday and was paid £7.80 per contact, that is a mix of face to face, calls and visits - with most of those involving some degree of responsibility from prescribing the good old paracetamol to prescribing drugs at the end of someone's life, to deciding if someone needed to be admitted to hospital, to being asked to decide over the phone by a paramedic if someone I had never met should be admitted to hospital, based on a set of numbers and symptoms. So I think I earned my £7.80 every time! Oh and then I had 50 documents to look at, bloods, letters - decisions to be made, and then had around 120 prescriptions to check and sign. I completely agree that it's a lot of money, but with it comes a lot of responsibility, a few sleepless nights and some very long hours and days without lunch! And I wouldn't swap it for the world - sure patients frustrate the life out of me at times, they can be rude, angry, perplexing and demanding. But they also allow you the privilege of being involved in the biggest events in their lives - they let you into their head and into their heart, they often say "I have never told anyone this before....." and they trust you to do the right thing. They can inspire you, make you smile, make your day, sometimes make you cry and every day I love going to work.

Anyway.......that was a bit off topic.

Someone asked why the NHS pays the cost of these expensive drugs......I don't really know the answer, but I think taking a look at drug companies goes at least some way to answering that. Unfortunately if they produce a drug and no-one else does - if that is still under patent, there is no way that I know of, to circumvent that. When it comes off patent that is different. It is unfortunately the case that drugs that are "essential" or required in liquid or other forms are easy pickings for drug companies I suspect.

I think to the person who commented that doctors should be making the cost of drugs more widely known....I don't disagree as per my example of the liquid antibiotics - but as you can see the response from the patient wasn't ideal either! Sure we can try to rationalise the use of medicines, encourage patients to buy things where possible (bearing in mind Scotland has no prescription charge and so it's an uphill battle in that respect, as everything is free if you go to the GP!), but patients need to do their bit by asking themselves if they really need paracetamol (sorry - I'm not obssessed with paracetamol - well maybe a tiny bit) or is it "just in case", do they really need to tick every item on their repeat prescription, I think some people think - it's free, so why not? Except it isn't free. If you want to start a campaign to highlight the cost of common medicines OTC versus prescribed I'm right behind you. I think the fact the NHS has always been free at the point of need has made some people shy away from discussing cost with patients, as patients generally respond by saying "I pay my taxes so I'm entitled" and doctors in the past I think were a little frightened to tell patients they were giving them a cheaper drug as patients would be upset and think it was somehow attaching a sense of value, or not, to that patient e.g I'm giving you Acidex not Gaviscon because its £3 a bottle cheaper. Patients then decide it won't work before they take it, and then they say Bob next door gets Gaviscon, and his GP doesn't give him the cheap stuff......Oh God and on it goes and it all gets too messy for words!!! I don't shy away. I tell them the cost of things if it is relevant. I think people who pay their taxes need to realise their taxes don't go very far.

As far as the question of triage goes, that starts at the door of the surgery, some reception staff are very skilled at re-directing patients to pharmacies, opticians etc, there is then a further layer of triage if it's not clear whether a patient needs a face to face appt, and a GP will speak to them on the phone, and if an appointment is then needed then it's given.

Ok.....rant over - that's better!

Would like to hear the views of the GP on this.

Here's something else you might like to know - the average cost of a GP appointment in England is £200 (to the public purse.. as of a couple of years ago when I heard this discussed on Radio 4).

At my surgery patients just press a couple of buttons on a computer and are given an appointment slot, like they were dispensed £200 at an ATM.

Time is money. GPs salaries are very high and they are very overworked.

Not casting aspersions on patients but wouldn't some sort of triage alleviate pressures here? :smirk:

BUT... why is this going on? Why hasn't anyone with more than 10 braincells said let's not pay well over the odds for these things anymore? I don't understand how this has been allowed to go on? It's basically fraud or grand misconduct on someone's part.

It's like the NHS is being driven to fail on purpose... I know doctors like yourself work hard already, but every doctor in the land should be getting together and getting this info out at all times. It's a crime to let it go on like this unaddressed.

Who buys paracetamol from the doctors? Surely far more expensive.

Could it be those patients who are incensed at buying OTC paracetamol were hoping for something a little stronger eg co codamol ? :smirk:

Can we be honest here. Patients perceptions matters and they should be discouraged from seeing a GP for minor ailments. But isn't the REAL problem with the NHS stemming from the systematic reorganisation and dismantling by a Tory government..

The NHS was rated one of the most efficient and cost effective health systems in the world prior to Tory meddling, now it's on the brink of collapse. By design - privatisation by the back door.

Whilst well meaning and worth applying the principle, buying paracetomol OTC isn't going to undo the damage being done - against the will of the vast majority of the public - and people ought to be focusing their attention and actively doing something to prevent our most treasured institution from being destroyed.

Remembering of course that the NHS was created in a time of enormous national debt (almost bankrupt Britain post WW2), far worse conditions than exist now.

[Some might also point to excessive GP salaries being a concern, but might be rude to mention that...:wink:]

I am a GP in Scotland, and it costs £10 to prescribe paracetamol - taking into account the GP time, dispensing fee, drug cost etc. It costs 19p to buy. It's a no brainer. However, there are a certain group of patients who are outraged when any suggestion is made that they can buy things OTC. I have started to tell patients (I choose who to tell) how much it costs us - if I feel they genuinely can't afford to buy a few packets then I will happily issue it.

It doesn't just apply to paracetamol.....many patients have no concept of the fact that the NHS is free to them, but it still needs to be paid for. I spoke to a teenager a few weeks ago (someone who was 18) who needed treated for tonsillitis. I offered her tablets, she said she wouldn't be good at taking them as she wouldn't keep up with them and forget. She asked for liquid, I had quite a long conversation trying to understand why liquid medication would make her more compliant.....I still haven't figured it out, but she insisted it would. It wasn't a swallowing issue, it was a remembering to take them issue. I even told her tablets were £1.28 a course and liquid was costing the NHS £59-ish. So if she was able to take tablets that would be helpful. She didn't even flinch and just said she wanted the liquid. I suspect she still will not finish the course. That made me feel very despondent about patients perceptions of what they can expect and should expect.

I think in Scotland, where prescriptions are free, there needs to be re-introduction of even a nominal charge. I also wonder about GP practices selling simple drugs/OTC drugs like paracetamol, I think if patients were able to get what was recommended in one visit, in a reasonable quantity (e.g more than they are allowed to buy from a shop, for example 100 tablets as if often prescribed) most would not begrudge the couple of pounds it costs for many medicines. 100 paracetamol costs £2.70 if you bought that OTC. Sure some people really can't afford that, but most people can. Purchasing them from a surgery would be cheaper than issuing a prescription, and if the GP says that's what the patient needs, and this is documented, then that places no responsibility on reception staff etc.

I agree with the original post -the NHS absolutely will not survive unless things change. Yes there are many sources of inefficiency, but medication usage is a massive element of this. I sign often hundreds of prescriptions in a day, for several drugs at a time, many of which are cheap OTC and expensive on prescription. And this is for one small practice in a small town. This happens all over the UK, every day.

I am a GP in Scotland, and it costs £10 to prescribe paracetamol - taking into account the GP time, dispensing fee, drug cost etc. It costs 19p to buy. It's a no brainer. However, there are a certain group of patients who are outraged when any suggestion is made that they can buy things OTC. I have started to tell patients (I choose who to tell) how much it costs us - if I feel they genuinely can't afford to buy a few packets then I will happily issue it.

It doesn't just apply to paracetamol.....many patients have no concept of the fact that the NHS is free to them, but it still needs to be paid for. I spoke to a teenager a few weeks ago (someone who was 18) who needed treated for tonsillitis. I offered her tablets, she said she wouldn't be good at taking them as she wouldn't keep up with them and forget. She asked for liquid, I had quite a long conversation trying to understand why liquid medication would make her more compliant.....I still haven't figured it out, but she insisted it would. It wasn't a swallowing issue, it was a remembering to take them issue. I even told her tablets were £1.28 a course and liquid was costing the NHS £59-ish. So if she was able to take tablets that would be helpful. She didn't even flinch and just said she wanted the liquid. I suspect she still will not finish the course. That made me feel very despondent about patients perceptions of what they can expect and should expect.

I think in Scotland, where prescriptions are free, there needs to be re-introduction of even a nominal charge. I also wonder about GP practices selling simple drugs/OTC drugs like paracetamol, I think if patients were able to get what was recommended in one visit, in a reasonable quantity (e.g more than they are allowed to buy from a shop, for example 100 tablets as if often prescribed) most would not begrudge the couple of pounds it costs for many medicines. 100 paracetamol costs £2.70 if you bought that OTC. Sure some people really can't afford that, but most people can. Purchasing them from a surgery would be cheaper than issuing a prescription, and if the GP says that's what the patient needs, and this is documented, then that places no responsibility on reception staff etc.

I agree with the original post -the NHS absolutely will not survive unless things change. Yes there are many sources of inefficiency, but medication usage is a massive element of this. I sign often hundreds of prescriptions in a day, for several drugs at a time, many of which are cheap OTC and expensive on prescription. And this is for one small practice in a small town. This happens all over the UK, every day.

I don't get it, I've always bought these things from supermarkets.

When something is free there will always be shortages as people will abuse it but how are they getting these things for free?

I don't even bother going to my GP because they always seems to refer me to private treatments which I can't afford or say there's nothing wrong with me.

You don't work in meds management do you?!

Completely agree. The issue is people requesting paracetamol "just to have in the cupboard" or for occasional fever in kids. For chronic pain prescribed paracetamol has a valid part in pain management and may actually stop people needing more expensive drugs or interventions. I appreciate that there is a lot of waste in the NHS, and this is just the tip of the iceberg, but self care does have the potential to save much needed money.

paracetamol is 17p in Savers to get back to the point of the post!!! lol!

​Sorry, I haven't got time to read 40 pages of nonsense. It costs the NHS an average of £3.83 per prescription of paracetamol... Never mind the cost of the doctors time. I've heard of people making appointments just to get free painkillers.

Anyway... What point are you trying to make?

This is not a deal at all, these prices are standard at any supermarket and have always been this price

COLD

You are the problem. People like you. A walking talking product of societal manipulation by the elites, and too blind to see it.

Don't hate the player - hate the game.

Bring on BASIC INCOME.

No, they are estimates of total fraud occurring, not just what 'gets caught'. Read the footnotes of the page.

These are actual figures produced by an actual government agency, not your 'real life experiences'. The impact they have on your life is negligible, you simply choose to be more concerned about it than personal and corporate tax evasion. As is clear from your comments, you think everyone on benefits is a scrounger who wants to commit the crime of riding motorbikes and drinking alcohol. How dare those poor people do that.

This is because the Daily Mail have been found to make things up out of thin air, several times. Also the article provides nothing tangible, there are no figures, nothing.

I've done your work for you.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10134429/Drug-firms-price-racket-calls-for-inquiry-into-drug-companies-overcharging-NHS.html

With a fraud level of £120m, it forms 0.1% of the NHS budget. This is well within acceptable parameters - fixing this won't save the NHS. Please provide better arguments.

You have thought out you response well with sensible stats that demonstrate the 'news' we're fed from the likes of the Daily Mail is just nonsense. Must be a remainer...

So effectively, if we were able to eliminate all forms of benefit fraud across Housing Benefit, Pensions, Employment and Support - with 60m UK inhabitants... each person will gain an average of £1.66 extra per year.

If you genuinely think it is going to make you better off, I am afraid the losses we will be sustaining in the first hour once Brexit actually happens, will dwarf that, so you have some hard times ahead.

You should be focusing your anger and frustration on those who imposed a trillion pound debt on you, your kids and grandkids back in 2008. Otherwise, you risk being 'left behind' forever.

Will be needing these after spending all my benefits on booze. Thanks OP :stuck_out_tongue:

​No I didn't 'kind of' say that, you just chose to interpret it as such. The figures are based on the actual amount of fraud that gets discovered. There is nothing else to base it on. How many people claiming benefits have other forms of income, for instance? The government has no idea. And the reason why these people are targeted as a problem, is because the guys growing weed in their lofts, and breaking into your house when you're on holiday, and riding motorbikes around the estate, and the people in a and e wankered on a saturday night are more than likely also claiming the dole. I don't read the daily mail and never have, these are real life experiences, and whilst the figures might be small, the impact this class of people have on other people's lives is massive.

This is what TIS was introduced for so you won't be out of pocket to go to interviews. As for travel to the job centre more than 95% of claimants live within travelling distance. If you fall outside the guidelines then you can continue your claim via post.

This site should be renamed...

TOXICukdeals.

Hardly gonna save the NHS is it?

Stupid.

Well yeah, you kind of did - because you were talking as if benefit fraud was a real, serious problem when it really isn't (except in the minds of Daily Mail readers).

The statistics are based on estimates of actual fraud occurring, i.e. not some guy looking at their local job centre and complaining that they're all lazy scroungers cheating the system. The government can be aware of it occurring based on prosecutions or simple estimates - it's bizarre to say they can't possibly measure it because 'if they could they could stop it'; the same could be said of any crime like drug use.

Here are the figures for you to look at yourself, you want page 9:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473968/fraud-and-error-stats-release-fy-2014-15.pdf

Housing Benefit fraud is 2.4%, Pension Credit fraud is 1.8%, Employment and Support Allowance fraud is 1.2%, and Jobseeker's Allowance fraud (what you seem to be talking about) is 3.2%.

Shock! Horror! Oh, except it only costs £100m. That's a quarter of the entire NHS budget....in 1948. It's current budget is £116.4 billion, making JSA fraud a whopping 0.09% of their budget.

So yeah, benefit fraud is really taking away valuable tenths of a percent of the NHS budget.

It would be an idea if the people who come up with these threads understood how prescriptions work. There are some fantastically expensive medicines out there - cancer drugs that run to many thousands per year but their use, I'm comparison to the vast quantities and range of medicines is pretty small. So that people can afford the expensive drugs a prescription service was devised whereby a standard price is set which means the vast majority pay £8+ for medicines that are way cheaper and this overpayment is used to subsidise the expensive drugs. So when the OP calls for a boycott of getting cheap drugs on prescription, it's the people who don't use the prescriptions service who are actually costing the NHS money...not the other way around.

SAVE THE NHS? Isnt that the job of our prime minister? the one that goes around wearing £1,000 leather trousers.
the torries are going to wear the nhs down to the point of them saying that the only thing they can do is privatise it.
I can see it from a mile away, same thing has happened to our rail

Oh dear, you need to stop reading the Daily Mail. How do milk and and bread vouchers pay for travel to the job centre or job interviews? Think before you type.

The reason the NHS is short of money is far more complex than that. The issues with it are far from just management, in fact the NHS has an incredibly low spend on management in percentage terms compared with any other large business.

Problems with the NHS:
- Government interference; it's still trying to sort out the mess Andrew Lansley left it in - he's responsible for the biggest degradation in NHS services in the past 25 years.
- The system of commissioner/provider doesn't work. Commissions try to buy health services as cheaply as they can, Providers want people in through the doors so they get paid for it. Each person who walks into to A&E costs a CCG £75 or so, even if they then decide to go home.
- The removal of admin. It doesn't seem to click with some people that paying someone £15k pa to do paperwork to free up higher paid nurses and doctors is good value. No, the Daily Express and co would much rather pay a consultant £120k pa to do that in his work load. That's what happens, it's the equivalent of having Ronaldo & Messi serving drinks in the second half of football matches. Utterly bonkers. Get the highest paid people to do the really complex stuff, not the mickey mouse stuff.
- GPs taken out of practices and into management. This was Lansley goal when creating NHS CCGs. The result is a mess. GPs aren't generally interested in management, but Lansley (who's father was a GP), wanted them to dictate how the whole health system would work, so effectively forced some of them into management roles. Net result? Less GPs to see patients, GPs on £100k+ p/a taking jobs of management staff who were paid £40-60k p/a whilst back at their practices they have to get Locums in to cover their work who cost ridiculous money. If people can't get in to see a GP where do they go? A&E of course, and that costs vastly more than 20 minutes with a GP to resolve things!
- Lack of mental health funding. This one is damn silly, the government say they're increasing funding for this, but locally your non-mental health hospitals are struggling to the extent that they're demanding more money from your local CCG, who in turn doesn't have it, so will be pulling the money out of mental health services to keep things afloat. Why's it so silly? Because mental health patients have a far higher rate of admission to hospital than many other groups, so rather than stopping some of the traffic into hospitals at source via mental health assistance things are left to get out of hand. It's pure fire fighting.
- Medicines Management. These are the people who keep track of medicines locally and advise GPs what to prescribe, what not prescribe, what is poor value in terms of it's results, what alternatives that do the same thing costs less etc. These posts are classed as admin though, so they've seen plenty of cuts in the past few years. That's less people to try and help GPs prescribe effectively. In terms of a Paracetamol prescriptions an increase in funding of these teams could easily see the huge amount spent on this drug by the NHS cut.

I could go on and on... ultimately though the major issue with the NHS at present sits with the Tory government 2010-2016, their actions have had a huge impact on it, and that's why it's performance has been on a downward slope since the impact of their changes kicked in from ~2012 onwards. It's hard to know if they genuinely thought they'd make it better, or if the plan was to tie it's hands behind it's back to a point where privatisation then looked like it's only saviour.

Nice post.Many time i been docs and they have tried too give me a prescription for paracetamol.
i always just tell them i will buy it from shop.hoping one day my pennies saved with help someone with a real medical necessity.

I just worry that people that get these on the NHS give zero **** anyway. nice reminder though!

I think it's Iron Man and/or Captain America which are wholly funded by the US military... propaganda to get young Americans to blow themselves up in the name of patriotism. Over here we have Royal princes who do highly publicised stints in the forces to get us all romantic about war.

Of course, famously, the diamond barrons used cinema to implant the idea that diamond engagement rings are the only engagement rings worth the sentiment... it worked, and yet the they are still sitting on an abundance of the things artificially inflating the cost of diamonds when they are probably in reality worth less than a cat's eye.

Heat added. I've been buying supermarket own brands remedies for years like ibuprofen and cold/flu treatments. I'm exempt from prescription chgs because of health issues over recent years but it wouldn't occur to me to get things on prescription that i can get for pennies when i do my usual weekly shop.

When you have to wait 4-6 weeks in the queue to be seen by GP (of course you have to show the proof you live in the UK to get there in the first place), then 6-8 weeks in the queue for consultant... I can't really see how the "health tourists" could milk the NHS considering the cost of travel and accommodation for that time (unless that's walk-in clinic/A&E cost, when it would be enough to just check patients entitlement (i.e. give them invoices if they're not covered).
Bigger problem seem to be failing austerity policy (for example taking 2/3 money from councils *and* from care for elders *and* acting so surprised when people who could be discharged from hospitals can't be), "health tourists" seem to be only smaller part of the problem.
...of course, one can always fire some older doctors and make young leave the UK then bitch about immigration :>
...and of course, I forgot to mention about privatisation of the NHS Tories are so dedicated to -- no wonder, plenty of them (or their cronies) have businesses that are either milking NHS dry already, or can't wait to do it.

​I never offered any comment to suggest any opposite to what you're saying, did I?
As for your figures, they may be right, but if the government knew who was committing benefit fraud then there wouldn't be benefit fraud, is I'm not really sure where the figures come from.
In a town like Rotherham, I'm pretty sure the figures run much higher. And if you were to observe the front door of the job centre for a few hours, you'd see why a portion these people don't work. Their behaviour is disgusting, and it is this anti social lifestyle which alienates people from them. I very rarely go into my town centre as it is such a dive. I don't see how big corporations have caused certain people to behave worse than animals.

I've never seen it. I watch films on Blu-Ray, DVD and other means. I wouldn't regard cinema as television but it has its own department of mind control - the film industry is a classic arm of propaganda but of course it was only Nazis like Leni Riefenstahl who would do such a thing and never the UK or USA who only make factual and honest to goodness wholesome aren't we just brilliant movies which would never under any circumstances attempt to distort reality heaven forbid. God bless America.

How ironic that buying medicine from large supermarkets which don't pay their fair share of taxes, is somehow "helping" the NHS

It would be far more helpful to us the public, if all these thieving companies paid their taxes so that the required investment can be put into the NHS.

Aside from that, we need politicians willing to use our tax revenue to increase spending on public services such as the NHS, rather than crap we don't need, like trident.

Anyway, still a good deal, so I will add heat.

Peace.

​This is an unfortunate paradox. It infuriates me that people waste GP's time with coughs and colds when there's F... all the GP can do to help them. My dad lives in Wales and since they brought in universal free prescriptions, the GPs are overwhelmed with people wanting cheap over the counter medicines for free.
Unfortunately, they walk among us.

We won't have an NHS anymore if people keep voting in a party hellbent on destroying it. The amount of misinformed idiots in this thread is horrifying.


You're right - benefit fraud is running rampant at about 3%. The horror!

Meanwhile, 'hard working tax paying good folk' don't seem to care about rampant tax fraud by corporations and still happily support them. Almost as if they don't actually care about fraud and it's effect on public finances, they just don't like poor people.

Except that, as anyone who read through any of the earlier pages of this thread would already know, the NHS don't pay extortionate prices for mild painkillers. They pay the same, or less, than everyone else.

​I'm pretty sure he wants those who don't pay for prescriptions to just buy their own for 19p rather than the NHS paying their extortionate prices and prescribing them for free.

Believe it or not, you can watch television, and still make up your own mind. I'm watching 'The Goonies' right now with my son. No indoctrination, propaganda, dogmatism, or anything else for that matter. Just good clean fun!

Television, like all media, can only have as much influence on you as you allow.

You say, "Daily Mail website doesn't count".
One must have good discriminatory power to judge a thing on its merit. If Daily Mail or for that matter -any- newspaper or the Internet has exposed -tangible- substance, why deny it? Unless you are actually biased. You got no case. Judge a thing on its merit. What's the difficulty. Please read - Thank-you very much:

"The drugs companies said they were looking into the claims allegedly made by their representatives, while it was reported that one firm had suspended a member of staff.
A spokeswoman for Pharmarama International Limited, based in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, said it would not comment while an internal investigation was being conducted.
Quantum Pharmaceutical said it was investigating the allegations and had suspended a member of staff.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2345639/Drug-firms-chemists-colluding-overcharge-NHS-millions-pounds-unregulated-drugs.html#ixzz4SYyv3jXL
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Precisely, in fact just sit down and relax - it's being taken care of as we speak - 25.5 months remaining.

No, I know that I am not entirely correct, I accept that there are people who screw the system but the people who have their opinions spoon fed to them by media organisations with vested interests are more ready to believe that the relatively small number who do so are a greater economic drain than the tax dodging patrons of the media organisations and their corporate buddies. It's easy for lazy people to pour scorn on somebody they can look down upon - especially when the mind controlling device in the corner of their room is pumping ready-mapped neural pathways into their blancmange like brains so they don't have to think for themselves. Mindless mob mentality guided and distracted by corporate crooks; that's why I don't watch television.

You're not entirely correct. People abuse the benefits system, and this does annoy hard working tax paying good folk. There are people claiming for disabilities that they don't have, for instance, which has led to the government trying to clamp down, but sadly, more often than not the wrong people get targeted, and those genuinely in need suffer. And there are people who claim to be single parents, who actually have a working partner living with them. There are many other ways to fiddle the system. And it does happen. And yes, to some people, unemployment is a lifestyle choice. I didn't read this in the Mail, or The Sun. I live in Rotherham, and have seen it with my own eyes on a daily basis.

In the North West of England, their NHS was paying 948 pounds PER ROLL of paper towels. The same paper towels that you got in school in 1985.

When I heard that, I decided the NHS has to go, preferably before all the boomers leave the youth with trillions more debt.

It's not quite as straightforward as this. The NHS needs restructuring, from top to bottom. I work in an estates department at a large hospital, and the amount of abuse of equipment that goes on is staggering. We replace literally thousands of pounds worth of equipment per day that has just been abused or used incorrectly. The managers have to take ultimate responsibility for this, but there is a culture within the NHS that money is no object, and that is throughout the entire organisation. Until people are held accountable from top to bottom, the NHS will continue to suffer.

Not what I said, everyone has bad luck but I still say that no one should get more for not working than for working else no one would ever work

I'm a bit confused about the sentiment of the OP.

Surely, if the cost of paracetamol is 19p and the cost of a prescription is £8.40, the saving here is to the consumer not the NHS. It could be argued that in the case of paracetamol and aspirin, getting it on prescription could be a net benefit to the NHS.

I love this oft trotted out hate flame.

I don't watch television so I can hardly be regarded as a TV sympathiser but to attack people for owning a FLAT SCREEN television is the most idiotic nonsense. You are basically attacking them for having a television because the last time I saw a CRT TV for sale was at a car boot sale about five years ago.

And being somebody who does not watch television, I know what an outcast that makes me; I am forever asked, 'how do you live without watching television?. So, the inference is that people who are alienated by their unemployment should be further alienated by their disconnection from social norms. I know from having worked in care that access to a television is regarded as a human right (a religious community was sanctioned by the CQC for not allowing residents with learning difficulties to watch the World Cup and it was deemed that their human rights were being violated).

But generally, you have really swallowed the establishment media narrative that it is all the fault of the poor and that people on benefits are somehow raking it in because The Sun managed to locate one or two people who are exceptions; people on JSA generally get £75 per week plus Housing Benefit which is usually a good deal short of rent. Being unemployed is not, despite what the Daily Mail would have you believe, a lifestyle choice.

So, in your world, nobody ever has bad luck and needs a helping hand then?

And why doesn't the workforce who give the best years of their lives to some ungrateful corporation for the privilege of being debt enslaved for 21 days holiday (if you're lucky) a year, ask for more instead of just bending over and taking it, being fed soap operas and talent shows on TV every night watching them like zombies?

You should watch Michael Moore Where to Invade Next before you react to my comment with your back up. If someone pointed out I was being exploited like a mug, and doped up with mindless TV to keep me sedated, I'd be a bit peed off too.

Why should anyone get more for sitting in the house than someone working at minimum wage, this is why some people do not want a job

So is M.E.

Just so you know its costs the NHS £10.49 each free prescription of paracetamol. Buy them yourselves!!!!

Fibromyalgia is a real disease

Wow, the stereotype of a bitter 'working-class hero'... Seriously, if working a 9-5 in an office or a shop and being 'allowed out' for lunch like a dog to do its business is such a nice life... why do you sound so bitter about it? For someone who has been given the privilege to be a debt slave you don't sound very happy about it.

People need to ask more questions of the life they acquiesce in to, lead sleepwalking by the brainwashing from newspapers and trashy TV shows like Britons on Benefits or whatever the hell button-pressing titles they give these low-brow 'programmings'.

To the person who wrote this: you're as much as a victim of your environmental surroundings as the dole scum you see and despise on your lunch. They are not the problem, they are the symptom of a system that is totally, totally, broken.

a small box of tissues is £5 in the NHS...

Delete the post!
The NHS had been saved!

Ever heard of NHS england ? Another corprate company brought in by corrupt nhs leaders getting a backhander fleecing us all

its not only public payments but free NHS, free accomodation etc....are they all included in that 0.5%?
People are getting away with too much. I didnt make the post you replied to but i definitely "hate" that.
Some poeple deserve the financial help but many dont and thats the message he sent.

It's OK everyone, stop worrying. I just remembered Boris and his pals saved the NHS back in June:

The restriction of max 32 tablets for sale in shops was theoretically a measure designed to discourage suicide attempts. Really though it was a cynical way to improve margins. I remember when you could buy a bottle of 100 paracetamol in Boots for much less than even now the cost of 100 paracetamol in 16-packs.

This is not to say that paracetamol overdose was a zero problem it did exist albeit in statistically small numbers. The more obvious solution though would have been to supply the tablets pre-mixed with the antidote methionine. Thus you could not overdose on them. For a while there was actually a branded version of this called Paradote. Private Eye ran a campaign for safer paracetamol but ultimately the ban just came in anyway.

Gonna have to start a thread about cheap supermarket Gaviscon copies (of which there are many) Reading all these rant posts gave me a headache so I took some 19p Aspirins and now I have acid reflux!!

Oops hit a nerve, ****!

What clinical background does the op have to advise or deter a visit to a gp or a&e

umm - i voted hot as surely this is about cheap 19p tablets being as effective as those being bought by NHS for so much more - I've not read the xxx comments before.... waiting to ensure shot down in flames....

Well it certainly wasn't any better before Obamacare. The state was spending more per head of population than the UK does (and the overall spend was several times higher) for generally worse outcomes. Some people's premiums were lower (because the insurers could pick and choose who to insure, and what for) but that makes no difference to the points I was making.

Do you know of any countries where the overall spend on healthcare per head is lower than the UK, and outcomes are better? I imagine there must be some, but I'm not sure who they are.

Yawn.

You do realise that unemployment payments (e.g the people you target in your post) account for less than 0.5% of public spending, right? That means that even if we put in the strictest 'get back to work you lazy non-taxpaying slob' bigoted policies, we're going to see a net gain... of almost nothing. You're hating the wrong people bud.

To all the Christians an Muslims in the UK, where is your " God " in all this? When you or your children get ill why don't you run to your local church / mosque and get god or Allah to cure them? Thank god you don't ( Lol, i know ) but It's clear that if you really had absolute faith you and yours would get worse and possibly die. Is that god's plan to save the NHS by removing 15m customers from it's system?
This has gone from a deal on meds to a discussion about the nhs/politics. So keep " God " and religion out of it, a system about knowledge science and innovation should not be sullied by pipe dreams, folklore and fantasy.

( p.s please don't wait for faith to cure you as it's dangerous and may open you up to ridicle )

Next time I get a visit from the question police, I'm going to demand a badge!

You must be having a great Saturday evening!

This is so true

How mortgages are created is another interesting one. The YouTuber WhiteRabbitTrust is an ex-banker with some interesting things to say..

If the world has a debt, who does it owe the money to?

'Money' is just made up on a computer. That's what quantitive easing is - just adding more numbers into the system. Saving the country this and that, is just a load of rubbish. There's nothing to save. Our debt can only ever increase as money is created from debt. learn how the financial system works. YouTube "the biggest scam in the history of mankind".

Could be worse, imagine if that happened during an election or referendum.

I don't know who gets but our GP prescribes it for everything like it's some miracle cure :man:

Its one of those deals were people vote hot no so much on the price but by the sentiment expressed. Its kind of like a thumbs up/thumbs down battle for those who care about such virtue signalling.

​wasn't saying that. However for a civilized nation it is unbelievable that anybody should be sleeping rough or going hungry.

The poorest parts of Africa are indeed true poverty however that is a third world country (and no I'm not saying that makes it alright because nobody should live in poverty regardless of where they come from!)

​Yes, but this is the fault of Lansley's ridiculous HSCA. They promised us no top down reorganisation, then wasted billions of taxpayers pounds on a top down reorganisation that made things worse. It's not a problem inherent in public provision, it's a problem of incompetent management by a dishonest government.

We need to get away from anti-NHS rhetoric and correctly apportion blame for its inadequacies to the politicians that run it.

LOL. "Save the NHS from bankruptcy". It is flooded with money and the sixth biggest "employer" cough bureaucracy in the World that uses government force to make people pay for it, and delivers terrible service in return. Rationed healthcare, waiting lists, needless deaths and a lot of money for it's managers. I'd rather buy a paracetamol from ASDA than be treated on the National Homicide Service. Heat added.

​oh I missed this slur, so this is a great deal?, or a revelation?, or are people just voting to show support for the NHS ?

you are thick, or ignorant o disagree with my simple statements, either way your comment regarding my opinion on this is pretty irrelevant to the original post.

Another one living with their head in the sand no doubt.

Aside from the London weighting, they are indeed similar.
I don't want to pry, but I have never heard of a case where the salary of a doctor is released in a compensation claim. We pay for medical defence insurance so, if sued, our insurance (or more often, the NHS trust) pays out if a valid claim, never the doctor themselves. Nor do I believe the NHS would ever release a certain doctor's salary (Confidentiality to the employee).

It sounds like you might have had a problem for a private procedure? Whom are indeed a select group of *usually* consultants whom part time work for the NHS and part time work privately. But I should emphasise the overwhelming majority don't do private procedures and therefore don't make anything like the few 'daily mail' headline rates.

These are the official figures for doctors before consultant level: https://www.bma.org.uk/advice/employment/pay/juniors-pay-england

Just to point out that I know many elderly disabled people who get paracetamol on prescrition who have to take the full dose of 8 tablets a day, they simply cannot get to the shops every four days to keep buying the damn things so when they lift the ridiculous rule that you can only puchase two packets at a time then I'm sure many of them would be happy to pay.

Our doctors must be doing fine. You can't get an appointment for love nor money. So you either get better or end up in A&E before you can get an appointment. 17 day lead time for a 5 day window! People queue outside before they even open like they are queuing for an iPhone!

I'm now from the group of the only time I'm likely to use the NHS is if I'm hit by a bus and taken to A&E without my knowledge.

When it gets to the time the internet can't help it will be time to call the undertaker's. :disappointed:

Did you bother to read any of the 749 comments before yours? Or do you actually think you've solved the NHS crisis in one swift move?

Sorry for being grumpy :/

Why doesn't the NHS buy generic brands where possible??

I totally agree with people buying their own paracetamol and ibuprofen I do that myself and just buy the cheapest one as they work just the same as the branded ones

However, working as a doctor in the community I am surprised by the number of people who wanted it prescribed. The cost of dispensing these very cheap medications is so high. People are offended if I even so much as to suggest they were to buy it themselves. I have parents coming in for appointments to get a free paracetamol prescription for their child with a snotty nose. There is the cost of the consultation, cost of the product and the cost of dispensing. People just seems to be oblivious of the cost of anything in the NHS and seems too selfish and self-righteous to in their thinking telling me "well I pay my taxes" and SO DO I!!!!! If everyone can just do a tiny bit to help it will make a big difference.

If anyone thinks that those living in 'relative poverty' is REAL poverty then compare their houses, their sewers, their endless supply of clean water, their flat screen tvs, their luxuries with those LIVING IN AFRICA!

Part of the issue is that people who need and routinely take paracetamol can only buy 16 at a time from supermarkets to stop people commuting suicide. GPs can prescribe 100s at a time so people use the service for convenience. This limitation on purchases needs to be removed, it will do the NHS a favour and it's not like it will stop anyone killing themselves anyway. They could just go to two or three shops if they were determined.

​well yes, it would be an area of their life that has no concerns, so would not try to solve a problem that doesn't exist for them, they would not think about it. If they knew they could save tax payer £8 a throw, would they ? debatable but the best for themselves on a low budget would obviously be to take cheapest option regardless of potential benefits for others.

nice try but im not saving **** all and plus i never get ill

Why won't they, because they can get painkillers for free?

The general public have no medical or pharmacological training. In general they would be unable to take them responsibly and thus the risks would outweigh the benefits otherwise antibiotics would likely be OTC here. All drugs and medicines have side effects, including antibiotics, some worse than others. There aren't many addictive painkillers currently OTC, the only one I can think of are low doses of codeine and this has warning labels plastered all over them and are sold at the pharmacist's discretion.

Canada only sells topical antibiotics OTC, think of a savlon-type cream for cuts and minor wounds. All those USA drugs you listed are listed as Rx i.e. prescription only so I'm not sure where you're getting your info from. It's also a silly argument regardless. Some countries allow you to buy guns quiets easily and in some homosexuality is illegal, shall we legalise guns and ban homosexuality too because other countries do it?

so if these are 19p, how is it a waste of money for the nhs if u pay £8.20 for them?

What a load of rubbish a prescription costs more and gives money to the NHS

Im shocked the amount of people voting hot... I wouldnt pay more than 30p for a pack of painkillers, these prices are common knowledge?

Also who doesnt know that cheap brands and expensive ones are the same ingredients? (watch out for vitamin products tho, a lot of them are half dose, read the RDA's on the back)

Im just flabagasted how blind some people must have been to make it past the age of 16 without knowing these things...

Proof stats? My point is there has never been a sensible study into it without bias from one side or the other ... It's all who you choose to believe .

I was replying to a post about immigrants and using the nhs .. Sorry forgot to link it . And this post has degenerated into an attack on the poor , jobless , rich and everything else long before I posted . But I apologise for taking it off topic .

This is true, particularly in the case of the NHS - what's your point?

​I was involved in a recent compensation claim for blinding me in 1 eye and severely damaging the other and the senior doctors salaries and head of department were disclosed as well as the real amount of hours. Are salaries similar across the country (besides Ldn waiting allowance)?

Giving people the CHOICE to take medicines responsibly should be a basic human right. Painkillers are potentially far more harmful than antibiotics and are proven to be addictive yet nobody would ever suggest they were made available only by prescription.
Antibiotics are available over the counter in Canada and European countries such as Spain. Even in the heavily FDA regulated USA you can get antibiotics like vantin, Noroxin and Keflex.

What situation we have now? Some people are just obsessed and will turn any conversation about anything into a rant about immigrants.I have perfectly nice and otherwise normal mates who when I have a conversation with them about football or motorbikes or cleaning gutters within about 2 minutes they have kicked off about immigrants. Now you just did the same with paracetamol.

None of this was an issue until the poorer countries entered the EU. For 30 years the countries had basically the same standard of living so migration was mainly for work etc and in limited numbers . Then when the eastern block entered with wages a fifth of uk wages the figures ramped up . can't blame people for wanting better , but at what cost ? . Stagnation of wages for the low skilled , competition for social housing , massive strain on schools , and yes on health also . The politicians expected 10000 a year .. This turned out to be 170000 a year from the Eu. This was media managed into " immigrants are good for the economy and cost the country nothing " then announce any research into this statement is racist , so the truth is hidden , leading to the situation we have now .

basically any benefit-er that can afford 19p , should do this...but they won't

...i doubt they have any concern to do so, its free for them and they can just charge the tax payer £8 instead , no brainer - just like getting a house to lounge in all day for free and having the taxpayer cover the 1000's when its unlikely they have ever paid tax in their life.

It;s sensible financial choice on their part, you cant expect people with nothing to pay money they don't have to - and so the only fix is changing the system,

There are big changes a head though, next GE will be an interesting one - be prepared for the snide trickery or the anti 'brexit' brigade and the like

​Very true. It will be interesting to see where Europe will stand following brexit. I think we'll introduce an insurance system, similar to what we use on holiday. Ooh and the rest of the world as well just before someone calls me a racist or a fascist or a xenophobe or a nazi or a bigot or a platypus... Basically any word meaning anything, really

The way their figures now work makes it look like poverty isn't an issue when it evidently is.

Don't we anyway ? It's absurd to run a contribution based health , education and benefits system , then let people access it when they have paid zero in .

​So we should give free health care to the world? like every other nation doesn't?

The fact is everyone is a burden on the nhs .. If nobody used it , it would be awash with money . Immigrants and health tourism do have an effect obviously , but to what extent , who knows , and until they stop referring to any study into this as " racist" we will never know .

Check the balance sheets before moaning about "foreigners" burdening the NHS, it's a myth.

https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiPqbnuvOnQAhVKOhQKHUkBDJUQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.englishforum.ch%2Finternational-affairs-politics%2F248891-junior-doctors-nhs-vs-swiss-6.html&psig=AFQjCNFrWEvLSd5Mt1toNx1D2bnCgUR5zA&ust=1481453944184625

" hey mum we are on the up , we only live in relative poverty , not abject poverty"

​The government moved the goal posts on the definition of poverty and relative poverty to massage their figures.

What a vacuous statement. I asked for evidence. Very often what people think is true, empirically isn't. So actually providing it helps stop people claiming anything they want and then saying "Oh the evidence is out there, people have read it, so therefore it must be true."

How much do you suppose the cost of the admin, the doctor's time, the use of the consulting room, the purchase and distribution of the drugs and the time of the pharmacist at the dispensary would amount to if you did it privately?

If surgeries weren't clogged up with slackers who are trying to get medication that costs pennies for "free" or concocting BS stories to try to get their GP to support fraudulent benefit claims, we might have a better, more responsive health service.

That's ok then .

There aren't really any restrictions, wander around the shops, pick up a couple of packs in each shop, or simply go through the checkouts in Lidl or Aldi a few times and you can fill your shopping bag with the drug.

Yup that too. As a country overall we are doing very very well regarding antibiotic resistance thankfully (much better than the rest of Europe which dishes them out wilynily)
Haha. This is probably the best post of them all.
STOP reading the bloody Sun newspaper.

Do you know what the doctor starting salary was until the new contract? £22,000!
Do you know what the doctor starting salary is now with the new contract? £24,000.
Did you know that doctors work 48 hour weeks (minimum) in full time employment?

Doctors have just been given a new contract; which absolutely stinks. Bare in mind there have been no changes to salaries for the last 8 years or so, so due to inflation the salaries have already sunken drastically.

There are now no enhancements for working weekends therefore drastically reduced wages, removal of important fees/fines that hospitals have to pay if they overwork you; this all means; more doctors are leaving the UK (don't blame them one bit), more shortage of doctors, more gaps in rotas, more unsafe staffing levels -> WORST PATIENT SAFETY

Relative poverty IS NOT POVERTY!!!!

Look at the profits of the drugs companies .. Scandalous .. Yeah I know R&D , blah blah.. The govt should invest in setting up
A decent pharma industry in this country to create jobs and reduce costs.

​The problem is the NHS is paying too much. If the medication is ridiculously cheap they should also be buying it at the cheap price. The pharmacy should not be able to charge such an uncompetitive rate.

Wrong.
For chronic conditions like arthritis it is regularly prescribed alongside other pain killers such as tramadol.

I think antibiotic resistance may also be down to the injecting of animals in our food chain to maximise profits

Did you add an extra 0 into your doctor salary fugues by mistake or intentional? My starting junior doctor salary will be circa £28,000 and my consultant salary will be £75,000-£85,000. That's full time employment.

A race to the bottom . Because the nhs pays its admin staff a living wage and joe bloggs ltd pays his the minimum , we should adopt the sports direct zero hours contract model for all our government funded jobs .?.

75% of children living in poverty in this country come from homes with at least one parent working .

I wonder how much effect it would have if the NHS rebalanced Doctors salaries and made them work a full week rather than part time. £250,000 - £500,000 per annum and then off to earn even more in their private practices which in some cases are run from NHS hospitals.

Its a serious failing in our country that if your paid from the public purse theres no wage fairness and obscene salaries - Im a judge so worth more than highly skilled and need 18% pay increases, Im middle management in a council so should be paid far higher then a similar role in the private sector, Im a doctor so should only work part time so I can run my private practice. You may as well call senior bank staff public paid as for sone reason its public money that bails them all out while they take obscene amounts for themselves.
I dont think anything will change but the NHS and other public sectors will always be strapped for cash as the more you feed it thr more it wants due to self importance.

I haven't read all this thread but has anyone told the NHS? They're the ones who should be saving money by buying from asda...

Also has anyone mentioned that asthma sufferers can save a fortune by buying ventolin in Spain? Everytime I go on holiday I stock up as they're only E2.60 & you don't need a prescription. Just let your doctor know you've got them.

People lash out at others when their own lives are awful. This person is just jealous and hates their job. So they take out their frustrations on the unemployed or minorities groups. It's why all forms of prejudice exist.

​Quite right. The other day I diagnosed a patient with a relatively innocuous-sounding sore throat with a haematological malignancy. On the other hand, I see about 5 people a day with a blocked ear after a cold, which is entirely normal and requires no medical treatment.

Antibiotics aren't indicated for any of these people. Google is incredible and I must confess that we do use it, but it's no substitute for med school. If you have a cough or cold, try the pharmacist first, then see your GP if symptoms persist.

​Excellent post. C-sections are brutal indeed; ripping your first abdomen apart with your hands is something of a rite of passage for a JD/medical student. I wouldn't recommend it unless absolutely necessary, we are designed for reproduction after all. If you need one, however, don't fear; we do everything we can to make it as comfortable as possible. You won't see or feel much at all.

​HA HA you can't see past getting your free drugs, every time someone visits their GP to save themselves, for example, £1.50 on cold and flu medicine (if you get free prescriptions) the gp gets £30 for your visit and the NHS pay your prescription cost (it looks like they don't have to pay for it but the books have to be balanced), it costs the gp time that could be used helping someone who actually needs help.

You're also prescribed a recognised a brand that every pharmacy is likely to stock to ensure your prescription can be filled immediately. So instead of your prescription costing the NHS £1.50 it costs £4.50 for your medicine.

So to sum it up, you get a free £4.50 flu medicine (which could cost you personally £1.50), the NHS pays £38.50 for the doc and prescription, multiply that by let's say 10 times your GP does that per day, multiply that by 30,000+ surgeries in the UK = a crap load of money.

If you went and bought your own simple meds such as ibuprofen, cold and flu capsules then you save the NHS £38.50 and if everyone did that then the NHS saves 'a crap load of money' that they can use to get your operation or cancer treatment or what ever treatment, that you may come to rely upon, quicker in the future saving your penny pinching **** so that you can come to HDUK well into your 90's and save your skinny **** money when your pension amounts to little more than a tin of beans :smile:

Sorry but this is simply wrong. Dental abscesses require diagnosis by dentist to determine any necessary treatment such as extraction and antibiotics aren't even routinely prescribed. If you have or think you have an abscess you need to go see a GP or dentist, not self-diagnose and self-medicate with antibiotics. For example you may not need the antibiotics because either it's not an abscess or it might go away by itself after a couple of days or the antibiotics may not be suitable or strong enough for the abscess anyway.

When you pay the £8 for a prescription charge you are not paying for the drugs themselves, it is irrelevant if they are cheaper than £8 or not. Antibiotics are very important drugs that should be regulated, there is no significant benefit in making them available without prescription and certainly not if you just want to save a few quid.

And they get free Buckie and deep fried Mars bars. What's not to like?

Prescription charges in Scotland are free.

If it is on the internet, you can link it here... Daily Mail website doesn't count.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It is question of *improving the system* with -checks and balances- not throwing out the system. There is no throwing out the baby with bath-water. The *need* is to to make the system accountable. Just like we have had a number of greedy MPs who exploited the system for *many* years with expenses scandal. They were exposed. Did we shut down the Parliament? Some had to go and some paid-back the money. We are not saying vulnerable should not be protected. On the contrary, the NHS is *for* the vulnerable. But we can not allow exploitation to go on unchallenged. Otherwise, NHS is finished. Regards Points 2, 4 & 5 are there for those that have got the sound presence of the intelligence to observe what is happening - it is on the internet.

The art of sweeping generalizations isn't dead here... People who work can still be poor.

No more for you tonight.

WE'VE TOLD THE WORLD THE TRUTH ABOUT SKEKSIS ROCK DEMON BRIAN MAY'S ANCIENT UNCHAINED EVIL.

WE'VE BLOWN THE LID OFF OF HIS FOLLICULAR FABLES.

WE'VE REVEALED HOW MAY DESTROYED FREDDIE IN AN OCCULT BLOOD SACRIFICE DURING A DESPERATE BID TO TAKE HIS PLACE IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF THE PUBLIC.

WE'VE EXPOSED HIS SHAMELESS MOCKERY, EXPLOITATION, AND HUMILIATION OF COWS AND FLIGHTLESS BIRDS.

NOW, IN A MIND-BLOWING NEW SERIES, WE THINK YOU SHOULD WILL DELVE INTO THE SHOCKING TRUTHS ABOUT FREDDIE MERCURY AND HIS TRAUMA-INDUCED MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES, OR 'ALTERS' - AND HOW LECHEROUS LIAR BRIAN MAY CONTINUALLY REINFORCED HIS PROGRAMMING - ALL WHILE USING MERCURY AS A TOOL TO FURTHER MAY'S DISGUSTING MASTER PLAN. BE FOREWARNED, MUCH OF THIS WILL BE SERIOUSLY DISTURBING TO MANY OF FREDDIE'S LOVING AND DEVOTED FANS. BELIEVE YOUR EXPERT OPINION ADVISERS WHEN WE SAY THAT EVEN WTYS WAS SHOCKED TO OUR FOUNDATIONS BY WHAT WE UNCOVERED WHILE RESEARCHING THESE DARK THEMES...STILL, THESE TRUTHS MUST BE REVEALED IN ORDER TO FREE FREDDIE'S SOUL FROM BRIAN MAY'S OPPRESSIVE, MURDEROUS LIES, IN ACCORDANCE WITH EXPLICITLY LAID-OUT DEACONIST PROPHECIES. IN THIS SERIES WE WILL COVER:

-FREDDIE'S TRAUMATIC CHILDHOOD RAPE AT BOARDING SCHOOL
-FREDDIE'S KNOWN ALTERS: FAROKKH BULSARA, FREDDIE MERCURY, LARRY LUREX, MOTHER MERCURY, MELINA MERCURY, WHITE QUEEN
-FREDDIE'S TRANSFORMATION FROM 70s TRENDSETTER TO 80s "GAY CLONE"
-THE TRUE MEANING BEHIND MERCURY'S MAGNUM OPUS "BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY"

I'm all for this good find op

Those are good things.

Thanks for a clear and logical approach to your post Tianuk. You are a voice of sanity and reason and I admire the way you dismantle the 'facts' provided by John London.

Easier not to think about it mate .,just keep paying your taxes to keep them , Nothings going to change .

I know people shouldnt take them for colds but there are plenty of infections that necessitate penicillin for treatment that does not require a doctor to diagnose forching you to pay 8 quid for prescription that would otherwise costs pennnies. Tooth abscesses for one.

The NHS spends less per capita on public healthcare than Canada, Germany, USA, Switzerland and in the UK it is available to everyone. The USA in particular spends more public money on healthcare per capita than in the UK, but of course not everyone has access to the service.

The poor demonise themselves with their fecklessness and their sponging off the state.

wonder how much NHS pays for it? they must be using corrupted contracts their heads and politicians make, all brits btw.

If the Tories could get away with food stamps they would . Demonising the poor , sick and jobless , with the help of the media , has been the aim since they got in . Worse times ahead I fear .

It's maddening to think, he's getting angry at unemployed people for the NHS failing (for some reason??), when it's the Tories, who were voted-in by angry idiots like him (because they promised to punish the unemployed) who are deliberately and systematically de-funding services so they can eventually sell the whole thing off cheap to their millionaire donors. The future of the human race never looked so bleak.

Bread and milk vouchers eh? Well I am gluten and lactose intolerant , can I have fags and booze vouchers instead .

​I see.. well whoever is giving a jobless person 14k credit is a dumbass!

Too true! Everyone's entitled to an opinion but it does make him sound like a cretin. How can you go from the NHS is in the **** to having a pop at the unemployed? Did they somehow cause the problem?

Like I tell my kids, question everything and don't follow the crowd!

The best way to save the NHS is to stop voting Tory

http://nhap.org/what-you-can-do/facts-fingertips/links-between-mps-lords-and-private-healthcare/

There's a reason they're so rich

Why does @John London avoid the question and tell us WHERE his "In My Country" is?
Also if its so flippin' good in his wont tell us "My Country" why doesn't he go back to his "My Country" if its that wonderful.
Ps
I voted remain and both my parents devoted their lives to the NHS, dad a Consultant pediatric anaesthetist and mum a teacher at Alder Hey Childrens Hospital Liverpool.

Scary how many people liked this post. This is the kind of mentality that caused Brexit and Trump

"Our own"

Cringe, cringe, cringe.

I think this is a brilliantly thought out response to this troll.

​Brilliantly said.

Really top notch post.

Unfortunately there are people who read the tabloid crap and take it as gospel.

Probably £19.99 to the NHS.... with a few back handers to make it easier to swallow :wink:

Is this site turning into facebook now?

Keep your ill informed opinions on public services to yourself.

on the same theme .. My mate got made redundant after 30 years in a well paid job , paying substantial tax and NI (even his redundancy was taxed) .. And cos his wife works , he can't claim a penny after his initial 6 months contribution based benefit stopped . So after 30 years of paying in he gets zilch, and pays full prescriptions etc . And at mid 50s is struggling to find anything . At least he is spared bread and milk vouchers eh.

This country has become racist, immigrantist and so incredibly stupid and gullible! People always want to put blame on benefit claimants and immigration and not people running country and companies bleeding us dry. People will bitch and moan when we start having to pay for healthcare upfront and people will bitch when rights are taken away you bloody voted for it!

Furiousjammin I've worked all my life up till last year when I was taken ill your attitude stinks about the unemployed I had the same attitude as you before I was unemployed but untill you been in that position you can't imagine how hard it is to get a job especially at my age I must have been to numerous intervews done courses to help me applyed for jobs rediculous amounts of times...but at the end of the day I've paid my taxes n my nat insurance I'm only getting back what I paid into for years n yes I bloody well will spend it how I like ok so plp remember one day you could be unemployed yourself...so dont knock plp that are on the dole thru no fault of there own you don't know what they been thru....n I'm not ranting I say it how it is n thru experience...

This outdated view that all the budget goes in managers coffers is early Cameron 2006 rhetoric. He slated labour for introducing private tenders for treatment yet in gov.t he took his/Osborne's Bullingdon club fantasy of reducing the size of the state including the NHS to the point where total privatization would become a necessity. As long as the poor keep dying young and the middle/upper classes and elites live on then conservative values will remain strong.
If the tory MP's including May were forced to take the truth drug sodium pentathol their dreams and views on the insignificant poor would terrify you, whereas insignificant Jeremy Corbyn would whimper ' where's my humanoid breathless barrel Diane Abbott '

Thanks, that's very kind. Yeah ED or Emergency Department it's the phrase the kids are using these days lol

Indeed, however, if you work in the NHS you can see the duplication between CCG's and CSU's is a bit of a joke. I used to work in the medical devices and our brands were overlooked by a CCG because the competitor offered 2 different types of colours, same device, same safety profile, same efficacy, same functionality same MHRA validation.

It cost one CCG an additional 1.8 million pound.....because the other provider had one more colour.

Madness.

Hi Caroline
I know you dont earn money (well I assumed you didn't like me) but 4k degrees is Kudos and I think you are likely to enjoy more success, just saying.
thanks for the posting.
ps
is EDs A and E?

TBH I have no problem with immigrants and don't listen to majority of the media on this issue like lot of this country does and I don't criticise them because I know it's not so black and white and it's benefical. The reason I said "why don't you go back home then" is because of you criticising how crap ours is but saying how amazing it is back home.

Believe me I know we have some issues. I'm struggling with illness for last few years that struggling to get under control and no one will prescribe me meds that I think can potentially make a big difference. One because of cost and it's a heated subject if works or not ( though studies and patient experience clearly shows it works for some people) Some of the doctors are also awfully incompetent and have no manors but changing it to private won't fix those issues.

and what country is this John London?


Again; I'm intrigued to find out the location of this utopia.


LOL this is just ridiculous. This definitely DID NOT happen; you see in the NHS they do actually attend and treat to people based on their clinical need; if the radiologist or whoever didn't authorise the scan it would be because there weren't sufficient indications for it, not because they couldn't afford it. Again; if you could enlighten us all on the issue itself, so far you have just written a lot of ambiguous stuff.


Again; more ambiguity; what was wrong with the baby?. it wasn't an emergency so why the need to see the Paediatrician right away?
Do you know how many worried parents visit the GP about their children?
Why waste precious paediatrician time when a GP can sort out the problem?


More lies and utter rubbish. IN THIS COUNTRY doctors ARE present during births for COMPLICATED patients and when they are NEEDED! Do you know how many births occur every hour in THIS COUNTRY? How feasible and efficient would it be to have a doctor with every woman giving birth?
Also if the baby is macrosomic or past dates (a very large baby!) and the health of the mother is put at risk through normal **** delivery then of course she will be given a C-section. Stop making stuff up.

Have you ever seen a C-section? do you even understand the risks involved?

I know this happens in Cuba; and it currently happens in the UK for a lot of different groups of patients who suffer from chronic conditions; it would be nice; but would also cost a lot more money for the taxpayer.


How is it Stalinist? You've just been talking about the wonders of "state health insurance"; how very Stalinist of you.


You honestly believe an extra 2% GDP is a similar figure for healthcare spending? (Germany compared to the UK for example), you also realise Germans pay far more each for their healthcare per year? Give me facts that all those countries have vastly superior healthcare systems.

Mr. John London; you obviously have a very large chip on your shoulder; and it does sound like YOUR country seems to be some sort of utopia according to yours truly.

Nope. It's the patients who will go to see a doctor to get a "free" prescription for drugs that would cost them pennies. The administration, the doctors time, the use of the buildings and facilities, managing the supply chain and the use of a pharmacist all cost money - increasing the real cost of the drugs by several orders of magnitude.

This has absolutely nothing to do with money or profit (for once)

You are only allowed to buy limited quantities in one transaction for a reason - the risk of an overdose. Take over 50 paracetamol tablets in one go and most people will either end up with permanent organ damage and/or die.

For example: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-387953/Student-17-sold-lethal-paracetamol-dose-Tesco.html

Everyone's an armchair expert on health economics. As a doctor, I can tell you that the service has been cut to the bone by a government that refuses to fund it properly. They've rebranded underfunding as overspending to make you think the NHS is wasteful. Our public health spend per capita is about three quarters of that in Germany and France... and they don't even cover their whole population.

All the stuff about health tourism and excessive waste is utter nonsense. Most money is spent on elderly patients and those with chronic conditions, and we've been shown to have the most efficient health service in the world.

Don't believe the rubbish you read in the tabloids and please, for god's sake, don't regurgitate it parrot-fashion. People will just think you're thick.

If you could do that we would be completely f**ked; you've heard about antibiotic resistance before right? Immunologically compromised people are already dying needlessly because Mr. or Mrs. Bloggs insist on getting antibiotics for their cold which has lasted 2 days.

Unfortunately a full dose of paracetamol is 8 tablets a day each pack lasts two days. You are only allowed to buy limited packs!!
It's the corrupt drug companies that need sorting!!
There are people and families where every penny counts.!! Just saying

Another tip for drugs, is check the PL number, ALL manufacturers have to by law, have it on the packaging, same PL across 2 products means exactly the same product, don't by nurofen and the like, supermarket own are often exactly the same at a snip of the cost.

The government **** it up unfortunately by bloating it with beaurocracy and underfunding it in an effort to break it down. None of those problems you list existed more than 6 years ago. I agree with you the system is now inefficient when it comes to elective services but it's not the fault of the NHS itself but the government. The people strangely, appear to not care because they keep voting in the clowns who are responsible.

I've had similar problems - the staff are all as qualified and competent as you'd expect but many specialist services have been cut to the bone in the name of "efficiency".

If you care that much you should donate to charity. That's a very hypothetical situation, no-one actually pays £8.20 for a pack of paracetamol unless they need a ton of it on the regular without anyone grilling them on why they need so much.

Thanks for the 'go back to your country' comment, it's always enjoyable to receive those. I guess they are consistent with the times we live in unfortunately.

Actually I also thought before, like you, that the UK was spending a lot less on its healthcare than other European countries. This used to be true but not anymore following the huge costs bloating of the NHS which took place in recent years. According to the CIA World Factbook, the UK spends 9.4% of its GDP on healthcare, compared to 9.1% in Finland, 9.6% in Sweden, 10.8% in Belgium and 11.3% in Germany - all of which have vastly superior healthcare systems to the UK.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2225rank.html#uk

Other people mentioned on this thread some of the excellent experiences they have had with the NHS. I have had occasionally some good experiences too, mostly due to having been fortunate enough to be treated by some high quality staff from time to time, albeit far from on a consistent basis. In general my view is not that the staff is unqualified, but more than the overall system is inefficient and does not provide an acceptable level of service for a developed country, particularly for non life threatening health issues. Most people living in the UK are used to this level of mediocrity and think it is 'normal'. If in one of the other European countries I mentioned, they decided to replace their current health system with the NHS overnight, people wouldn't put up with it, there would be riots.

I bet you live in sunderland.

how did these deal get so hot paracetemol has always been cheaper at asda :confused:

Why did it work so well under Blair (god bless his warmongering soul) then? Life expectancy hasn't gone up that much over the last 6 years...

The Tories got you all exactly where they want -ie arguing & fighting each other, whilst they and the royals and greedy rentiers continue to live cushy lives.

That might be good if I earned money from the post. I was just trying to draw people's attention to the cost of these generic drugs and try to ward off inappropriate attendances at ED's and GP's

I voted cold in error.. apologies... stupid bottle of wine and fat fingers on tiny iPhone screen... ohh... takeaways here... nom nom nom......

If the current pensioners have paid more in than they're taking out, where have all their payments in over their 50 years of work gone?

​No prescriber will give paracetamol tablets on prescription for a paying patient.

16p is too much for some people... Don't forget those who are exempt from prescription charges qualify for "care at the chemist" or the minor ailment scheme. That needs to be promoted more imo.

ps
OP I recommend you doing the lottery tomorrow - approaching 4000 degrees for tablets that have been 19p for ages, your luck may well continue.

Wow 6.6% for pharmacist, I know they sell other products hopefully with higher margins but I now know why the owners look so pi#sed off.

The issue is that single payer healthcare never works.

They do collect them back, they have an empty dustbin in most hospitals thats labeled for purpose to place them in - to then be recycled and checked they are safe to be sterilised and re used and have new grips placed on the bottom (safety issues with used crutches). The crutches also have a number on them via a sticker to call and they will collect them from you at your home if you can't be bothered to take them back. They rely on honest people who appreciate being loaned them to bring them back when not needed, or arrange for them to be collected. It's the ones that don't give a toss leave them in their homes and ultimately cost the NHS further wastage.

Yes, but that is an average of all drugs - not just paracetamol. They definitely aren't paying £5.60 for a pack of paracetamol that costs 19p everywhere else.

As someone mentioned above a cancer drug might cost £1,000 a week. In the same way that Paracetamol isn't costing £5.60 a pack - the cancer drug isn't £5.60 a pack either, yet both cost just £8.20 if they are prescribed.

If I personally wanted to contribute £8.01 to the people who need the money to help fund their cancer treatment - isn't that a good thing, rather than bad?

You would have to be quite dim to pay £8.20 for something that's available from the same counter for over £7 less, but would go back towards the pot roughly broken down as...

See my other comment above

The point is the ones who work and don't get free prescriptions wouldn't pay the charge for a paracetamol prescription. The point being made here is that the unemployed and benefit scroungers will be given a prescription for these type of items for free and it's the NHS that foots the bill costing it money. Especially when they are contractually obliged to get their medicines from a certain company and have to pay well over the odds for them themselves. However this is only the tip of the iceberg on an NHS being bled dry. The ones who contribute the most to the organisation end up suffering due to the inconsiderate nature of others. Services really are not what they should be and there needs to be serious reforms to stop this merry go round

Surely, if you pay £8.20 for prescription Paracetamol, the extra £8.01 goes into the NHS, increasing the amount of money they have to treat other people?

Buying a 19p pack from a supermarket will save YOU money, but have no effect on the NHS at all, other than reducing the amount of money they have available to treat other ailments.

Isn't that fairly obvious?

​Theyve been this cheap for a long time.

​They don't lose elections, they have them rigged.

People seem to forget that the Tories are under criminal investigation for irregularities in their 2015 election campaign, if they weren't trying to cover it up. They wouldn't have their slim 'majority' (used in the loosest term may I add) then.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.indy100.com/article/where-tory-election-fraud-claims-are-being-investigated-in-one-map--bylZ35tQIXb%3famp

Voting Conservative and voting Ukip amounts to 2 sides of the same coin.

It's just like turkeys voting for Christmas.

stop going to the hospital for aspirin, who tf would do that anyway?

I almost fell for this!

But then realised you're trolling because you couldn't be vile or ignorant enough to think that there's no such thing as poverty in this country, not least because you're assured everyone who needs help is smoking.

Just read your post, got a flamedeer!

Yes finally someone with common sense. Great post, heat added :sunglasses:

I read through all of this and didn't even get a flamedeer :confused:

I completely agree with you. I think PrEP is crazy; taking medication that there's no clinical need for, is entirely unjustified, and unnecessary. In my opinion, PrEP will damage the health and immune system, of those taking it.

Your statement is entirely false. You do not know me.

Also, I do not have a horse, BUT you are indeed lectured on how to think - though not by me. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/01/the-establishment-how-get-away-with-it-review-owen-jones
. . . . and we are not actually having the false discussion you are alluding to.

S you paint everyone with same brush?

Not sure how this really saves the NHS.

From what I have been able to find out the biggest cause of stress for the NHS has been the increasing number of elderly patients. Elderly people require NHS support far more often that younger people and that usage pattern rises significantly as they reach very old age. Additionally, the older someone is the longer it usually takes for them to recover and the more likely it is that they will have complicating conditions such as dementia. So NHS demand rises significantly as the population ages.

Since 1963 the number of people making it to 80 has doubled, the number making it to 90 has gone up by a factor of 5 and the number of people making it to 100 has gone up by a factor of 20.

There isn't an easy answer to this problem.

There was one semi-humorous article in the Economist entitled "Smoke for your Country" - based on research that proved that smokers had a lower lifetime cost for the NHS than non-smokers - they even had lower costs when averaged over their generally shorter lives. This was because smokers had a much higher risk of getting cancer and dying in their 50s and 60s. A few months of intensive cancer treatment is far cheaper to the NHS than years of on-going support in later life. People who complain that smokers cost the NHS £X billion per year and should have their treatment limited should at least be aware that those choosing not to smoke are the ones who will cost the NHS more.

BTW - I am not encouraging smoking. :-)

There was another post about the cost of foreign aid. It appears that the UK budget for foreign aid is around £12bn per year. That is equivalent to about 8% of the NHS budget or 1.5% of total UK government expenditure.

Agree also NHS is too soft to even hard negotiate with Pharma cos. more so busy looking after their dividends.

So I don't have to pay innit..

Well said. Pretty sure Lynton Crosby was the architect of that particular brand of divide and rule. The perfect daily mail wet dream!

to be honest you are better paying for private health care than using the NHS

I got in with Bupa in less than 2 weeks where as the NHS had a 6 month waiting list

Thanks for your kind words. We've been trying very hard to save a deposit on a property but with rents as they are it's really hard. I and my wife have just applied for Help to Buy and we hope it'll come through or the b******s next door will move. The last straw was my little 'un starting to swear recently (told his mum to **** off) and we know for a fact that he'd not have heard that from us. The lot next door are always in the garden and have an extensive swear vocabulary. The kids appear to be all under 10 so you really do feel for them.
People like tryn2help have never been in our situation so they get on their high horse and lecture us on how to think about the less fortunate. I'm sure there're millions of genuine benefit claimants who don't work because they cannot for health reasons, however there're also thousands like my neighbours who play the system nicely and get away with it, all the while turning their noses up at those who pay into the system and make their profligate lifestyles possible..

There is no such thing as real poverty in this country.

Food bank use is often unwarranted - they can give up the fags first.

No working people should have taxpayers money spent on them to top up their wages.

People should have to fend for themself more.

This flies in the face of the facts; We've got over a million people in this country forced to use foodbanks, we have over 4 million people ALL working but living below the poverty line - they're on zero hours or low wages, but they're ALL working and still in poverty. The majority of them are in that working but poverty stricken situation because they were forced into it by being persistently sanctioned and harassed daily by DWP staff under severe instructions from the government, but your neighbours have somehow escaped this and are driving around in their fairly new merc?

If your neighbours actually exist they are very much in a tiny and ever-decreasing minority somewhere in the region of 0.00001 of the population.
They are at the opposite end of a society which sees people doing the exact same as they do, but on a million times more massive scale, and they usually get a knighthood for it.

Read and learn who's really screwing you over; http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/establishment-how-get-away-with-kindle-edition-0-99-amazon-2570679

Think we should throw more money at it tbh

Again, this isn't how it works.

For most drugs (i.e. generic ones), the NHS will either put out tenders or buy the cheapest/best value in the marketplace. In addition, many NHS hospitals now have their own pharmacy manufacturing units where they self-produce many of the common drugs they use - selling any surplus to other hospitals.

With regard to proprietary meds for hospital use (which is where most of the drugs budget is spent), the NHS typically engages in fixed price contract purchasing i.e. it negotiates with pharma companies to buy a certain amount of product at an agreed price which cannot be increased during the contract.

The only time the NHS has a problem is when it needs a particular drug which is only available from one supplier (usually under a patent) and an alternative drug isn't readily available. In this instance, the supplier has a relative monopoly and can dictate the price it charges the NHS (as is the case in my post #605 above)

have you ever thought, that the more money you help to save the NHS, by buying cheap pills means more money they have to line their pockets or more money to pay locums or crappy projects that dont work out..!! :stuck_out_tongue: or

Hi
Thanks for sharing.
Some of us dont realise how lucky we are. I try and never forget like being born in the UK etc
No one should endure what you have shared in your post.
I hope things inprove ASAP.
Cheers

If you ask for the non-Lloyds brand, it is the same price as Sainsbury's. (More expensive than shop pack obviously, because of bigger pack in pharmacy. In fact it is cheaper to get paracetamol capsules from the Lloyds in sainsburys than from equivalent from sainsburys shop floor.)

Possibly, but I was thinking more or less along the lines of the mechanism involved in 'winning' an NHS suppliers contract' and how prices shoot up when they've got that contract.

As others have said I don't think this is much of the deal but appreciate the sentiment of the poster. The numbers of people exploiting this is very low and the NHS will buy all these drugs for tiny amounts although appreciate there are other costs to consider and anyone needing these drugs should really buy them themselves. They'd also save GPs a lot of time.

As already pointed out, if anyone buying these drugs under prescription is subsidising more expensive drugs.

The NHS is great value if you look at it from an individual users point of view, even a high earner would struggle to fund a serious illness care and drugs out of the national insurance they pay. The issue is some people don't like paying for the NHS when they are not ill.
I am pretty sure that if a private healthcare provider could run the NHS with its current budget then the government would let them. I think this will happen eventually but for a vastly larger budget.

i'm more concerned about the homeless, there is enough money going abroad to completely change aspects of our country, im confident of that without having to go into any validation of figures.

I'd agree there is more to fixing the NHS than pouring money into it, but scrutiny and change regarding masses of money leaving our shores will have a bigger financial impact than people buying their paracetamol rather than letting the nhs foot the bill, it was to juxtaposition the potential impact of this posts endevour to 'save the nhs' - and people saving the nhs money this way(if it even does) are hardly providing any other sort of benefit for the organisation either.

there is a serious amount of complexity to matters like this, I have neither the knowledge or will to try & discuss the entirety of them, especially right here.

Yeah, my oppressors are my non-working neighbours with 4 kids who live rent free (well, paid by yours truly) and throw fag butts out their front window and soiled nappies out the rear windows into their own garden. Unfortunately. the only property I could afford was next to them. See, I pay my rent out of my own pocket. At least I have the pleasure of admiring their 12-Reg Merc ML as I drive past theirs on my way to work 6 days a week.
On the plus side, there's apparently another bun in her oven and the Council will hopefully be forced to give them a larger property soon, as it would be against their Human Rights to put all the kids together in one room.
Out of interest, do you live in North London?

I dont think the NHS are being Heterophobic they just want to target the highest risk group for maximum effect I guess.
Interesting points you raise though.

I see your point, but I don't think this thread has been about cheap ASDA own medicine for the last 14 pages.

I can't figure out if his was by design by the Original Poster, or just a natural tangent that has spawned from a deal being posted.

Many herbal medicines have been looked at, tested, extracted and purified the compounds that work and made into medicine. We then improved the original compounds by adding side chains. Medicine is the advanced and modern form of herbalism. If the NHS found I don't know turmeric, homeopathic remedies, St. John's wort etc cured meningitis or appendicitis or whatever ails you, that's what would be being prescribed.

All medicines, whether herbal/natural or man made/synthetic, have the potential for side effects. Just because something is natural doesn't mean it's safe/better and if something is artificial/synthetic it's bad/toxic etc. Vaccines are pretty artificial but very safe and effective. The NHS isn't part of a conspiracy.

They need to do a crutches etc 'amnesty'. They never collect them back after use. Lots of crutches, toilet frames etc in charity shops when finished with from people.

Surprised everyone is whining about 50p packets of Paracetamol, while the NHS will be paying £360 per month per person (or £4,320 each year) so that gay men who engage in "high risk" sex (i.e. typically without condoms) can be protected against HIV by taking an antiviral drug called PrEP.

10,000 people will be involved in a 3 year trial - potentially costing the NHS around 4320 x 3 x 10000 = £129,600,000 - although the "official" press releases claim the cost will be £10 - £20 million.

Without going off on any pro or anti gay tangents, this raises 2 really important questions:

1. Why should this trial be exclusively for gay men? There are many heterosexual / bisexual men and women who also engage in "high risk" unprotected sex. Why aren't they going to be offered access to PrEP as part of this trial? Surely this is totally discriminatory on grounds of gender or sexuality?

2. Is it fair for the NHS to be asked to fund preventative medication to the tune of £4,320 per person per year? Condoms, contraceptive pills and flu / travel vaccinations are relatively inexpensive. The argument for funding PrEP is that it's apparently cheaper paying £4,320 per person per year for prevention - instead of paying £350,000 (which is the lifetime cost of treating someone with HIV).

However, you could also use the same logic that the NHS should pay for everyone's gym memberships and fruit & veg - as this would reduce the burden on the NHS in the future. Or the NHS should provide addicts with free drugs, as this would cost the NHS & society less in the long term.

Kinda makes 50p for a packet of paracetamol seem quite minor.

Full article link: https://www.ft.com/content/8b1baa5c-b8b1-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9a62

I'm going all out with savings for the NHS by not going - every time I end up in a Surrey hospital I end up even worse off lol

Utter crap, these are the voices of the manipulated millions of struggling hard working people who are being taught by their oppressors that someone other than their oppressors is responsible for their lives being such a horrendous struggle.

P.S. It's called 'divide and rule' - and this thread is a perfect example of how effective it is.

i dont use Paracetamol, but if i needed it and could get it for free than I would like anything else!

If people can't see the humour in that I feel sorry for them. Laughter is the best medicine.

You can not buy more than two paracetamol based items over the counter at one time its the law. Paracetamol brands like galpharm or supermarket own have always been extremely cheap. Using ibuprofen is bad for you as is most nsaid products. Although they may relieve pain at the time further complications of stripping the lining of you stomach will only end you back in hospital and giving the nhs more problems, when you end up needing Gastro clinic. For most it makes sense to look to herbal medicine and remedies. Our bodies were not designed for synthetic drugs. But big phama and the nhs have always known this.

I think properly means that if you're ill, you receive treatment. I don't believe you can attach arbitrary monetary figure to it.

Actually, do you have a source for this? To prove it's genuine?

I'm just looking at the Statistics on International Development 2015 report from the Department for International Development, and it says that:

"..in 2014 the top three recipients of UK bilateral ODA were Ethiopia (£322 million), India (£279 million) and Pakistan (£266 million)."

So if that's one year, it seems a little hard to believe that the other four years (and that's a maximum, because we're assuming your table includes spending in 2016 which it probably doesn't) figures could be:

"Ethiopia (£3532.4 million), India (£3221.1 million) and Pakistan (£3508.6 million)."

..as you've posted? Maybe you have indeed posted real figures - but there's no source, and it seems hard to think that those over four years (probably less) could've brought the total up to ten times the amount of 2014 spending.

Well said my friend, well said. These are the sentiments of the silent millions who work had to pay into the system day in and day out but sadly whose voices will never be heard.

Yes, I'm an immigrant, who sells stolen goods for profit which I spend on running my BMW to get to the dole office where I limp in and sign on and claim my disability allowance, then off to the docs to claim my free paracetamol whilst sending some of my benefit to my lesbian cousin in Poland to raise her 14 kids she has with her immigrant partner who is recovering from breast enhancement surgery she received for free in a Middlesex hospital, she attended by NHS chartered helicopter, and whilst recovering in the UK after the surgery she stayed in a park lane hotel in London with a chauffeur service to run her to her check ups.


Stop believing everything you read.

You'll be a happier person.

I just cannot get on with generic Ibuprofen, they taste awful and if a guest goes into my bathroom cupboard looking for a hot towel I would be mortified if they saw a pack of anything but Nurofen.

I use my free prescriptions to get good quality painkillers that both me and my guests can enjoy after an evening of fondue and champagne.

It's hard enough living on the dole without the social stigma of generic value Paracetamol and Ibuprofen being in my cupboard.

No, the real question is; is the NHS value for money?

Are they being ripped off by suppliers - including equipment suppliers, drug suppliers, etc?

And would privatising it stop the rip-offs or increase the rip-offs?

Agreed that there will always be more wonderful treatments to be offered...the point I was making is that there wouldn't be a "crisis" of delivering current services, if the NHS had more resources.

Enough to look at the results of EU Ref, no need to go to HUKD to figure it out.

I'm not against privatising, but not at any cost.
There will definitely won't be enough money after we leave the EU as we expected to have deficit of a further £60bn, thanks to the Leavers.

If you hate NHS so much why no go back to your own country? Also what country are you from because most EU countries actually pay lot more for healthcare than here.

So many Neanderthals in this thread!

Wow! I can't believe that this is what "Great Britain" has come to!

I bet you're fun at parties

Privatising it will make costs go up not down.

May I ask which country this is? I'd quite like to move there!

Think you'll find that it wasn't everybody who voted for austerity...

Firstly, "not enough money" is not the primary problem in the NHS - it's where and how that money is being spent. Do you think that if we stopped spending on foreign aid, we could just buy more doctors? We already have to rely heavily on medical staff from abroad (which Brexit may substantially threaten) because we don't have enough of our own.

Are you also proposing that we shouldn't spend money on anything else until "our NHS is fixed"? There can be no spending on anything else until then? Do you not understand how foreign aid is important and is an investment for us too? We don't just it to countries out of the kindness of our hearts.

And the reason I made it clear that it was many years' worth of money is because when you add up something over time, it looks worse than if it's just on a yearly timeframe. Bigger numbers can make people angrier - which is exactly what it's used to do - and anger is a good motivator to get people to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do.

Like buy newspapers, blame immigrants for things, vote to leave institutions which make their lives better and elect businessmen to power who are going to drive their wages even lower into the dirt.

Yes lets punish jobseekers and add more misery to already misreable life. Despite what the press have you believe (obviously can't think for yourself) most people are not smoking fags and spending money on big screen tvs. A very few minority of people are but as usual being blown as a majority. Most people want to work and can't even ****ing afford fags or tvs on money they get on JSA. Most people are trying their damn hardest.

You are a real piece of work!

so very expensive musical chairs then

It needs privatising.

I cannot continue to exist in its current form.

There will never be enough money. Ever.

I read somewhere that medical experts have always said these drinks are entirely unnecessary, and that the only thing in them proven to help is the paracetamol, thus two paracetamol pills equals the exact same effect at a fraction of the price (Think 'Which' magazine also ran an article on this point).

Already paying National insurance and too much tax, y should I pay privately while those thieves get EVERYTHING for free? Hopefully you are not one of them..

Plus the Tory government who wants to privatise it

Not the first time I've heard such things.

Foreign friends have often expressed disappointment with their experiences of our health service.

Discussing an ailment with a Kurdish chap running his own business here, he surprised me when he said he went to Belgium to get his operation. This well-traveled man poured scorn on our NHS saying it was one of the worst systems he'd experienced.

Their views surprise me because they contradict my own experience of the NHS, whom I am thankful for saving my life.
If it wasn't for the NHS I most probably wouldn't be here; the treatment I got when I had a heart attack and again when I had a stroke undoubtedly saved my life.

Far better than BBCs 'Question Time'

I hope everyone sees the humour in this. Sadly I don't think everyone will.

I just cannot get on with generic Ibuprofen, they taste awful and if a guest goes into my bathroom cupboard looking for a hot towel I would be mortified if they saw a pack of anything but Nurofen.

I use my free prescriptions to get good quality painkillers that both me and my guests can enjoy after an evening of fondue and champagne.

It's hard enough living on the dole without the social stigma of generic value Paracetamol and Ibuprofen being in my cupboard.

I already have to pay over a hundred quid a year for my medication, so why wouldnt I get my asprin included in that

​Well, if you dislike the NHS so much why not return to "your country" for superior health care?

The Tesco cold & flu tablets are excellent

The "max strength" cold and flu tablets are a bit of a rip off. Most have 1000 mg of paracetamol, with just some caffeine, and a decongestant added. I get a similar effect taking 2 paracetamol, some strong coffee, and a cheap antihistamine.
P.S This is a good deal, I have my stock in already.

Why should anyone put up with pain if they don't have to? Clearly you haven't experienced enough pain in your life. "Some cases" :laughing: "Don't take medication for colds" hilarious.

Well, I find it amazing that this 'deal' is getting 3,500 degrees+. I voted cold for this deal. I am a foreigner living in this country for 20 years, and compared to what I was used to in my home country, my view is that the NHS is a complete piece of crap (made up, in parts, of well meaning and competent staff) and should be dismantled. In my home country in continental Europe, the health care spending as a percentage of GDP is about the same as in the UK. Yet for the same cost, the level of service we get in my home country is a million miles better than the NHS (think the difference between a Rolls Royce and a Lada).

A few examples from personal experience:

- when my wife had to go to ER recently for a very serious issue, due to NHS budgetary issues, she wasn't offered a scan even though it was a potentially life threatening emergency. We had to go private the next day to do the scan. There is no way this would have happened in my home country, and we wouldn't have had to wait four hours to be told this.

- in my country, when a baby is sick, you get to see a pediatrician straight away, i.e. same day, without GP referral. Here last time my baby daughter was sick, we went to GP, then waited several days, then were told that we had a pediatrician appointment in 5 weeks. We ended up having to go private as we wouldn't take the chance with the health of our daughter.

- in my country, when a woman gives birth, a doctor is present during the birth, and if a woman thinks that the best thing to do for her is to have a caesarean, she can have one paid for by the state healthcare system. In this country, no doctor shows up during the pre birth period or during the birth itself unless something goes seriously wrong (at which point it may be too late), and unless you pay £15K or so to go private, forget about a c section in most cases, even with valid medical reasons such as having a very large baby.

- in my country, you get annual health checkups paid for by your state health insurance. Under the NHS you only get to see a doctor when you're already sick. Talk about preventive medicine!

Truly, I hope the Stalinist state-controlled NHS goes bust and gets replaced by a properly functioning, efficient healthcare system along the lines of what most of the rest of Europe has had for years. I don't think this will ever happen in my lifetime sadly.

What a stupid self righteous and self indulgent OP... I know it's meant with good intentions, but get real, you obviously no nothing about NHS prescribing, and the only thing that will truly save the NHS, is money, which the Tories are cutting as of when they can.

I'm not confusing anything , and who said it was for a year

A lot of money going out of our country that could be used to 'save the nhs from bankrupcy' and also deal with the countries homeless crisis, its disgusting.

3 and a half thousand degrees for paracetamol that has been this price for years. What the actual f&%k is going on here!
This site deserves to be destroyed now.
I bet the op is laughing his t#ts off. (medication for which available on prescription)

Some contradiction there - you exclaim about fighting for our own country and give two examples of fighting in someone elses!

Do not confuse "poor spending on foreign aid" with "all spending on foreign aid is bad."

Foreign aid, even when it isn't tied to benefits to us (which it often is) is an investment in global security. Many of these countries would slip into civil war and be taken over by despots which would cost us far more than this, which is only a fraction of total government spending. Plus those figures are aggregated from 2011, rather than what we spend in a year.

As I've said before in this thread: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We'd never spend government money on anything and be all the lesser for it.

I always buy supermarkets own cheap versions of paracetomol as they are just the same. Perfectly fine. Even been confirmed by doctors on tv before too.

Dont be a mug by paying extra for the expensive branded ones. Get the cheap ones

I am pretty sure that the reason this "deal" is getting so much heat is because people feel like they're voting to "save the NHS," which is obviously (and rightly, imho) a subject which people are very passionate about it.

However the right way to do this is to treat the political process with the respect it deserves - and that means scrutinising your local candidates who run for MP, actually voting, holding them to account when they're elected and then respecting them when they do what it is a hard job right. If you don't follow those steps from the very start, the process doesn't work, and then we'll wonder why we end up with governments who don't seem to care what happens to us and let us scapegoat other people (immigrants, the EU etc.).

"In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve."
- Joseph de Maistre

Really...this is hardly a deal is it? for those who pay, its common sense to buy things at pharmacy cost if avble under the £8 prescription line fee

Why someone gets prescription for free/abuses the system/NHS is stretched.....has no place here and just encourages keyboard warriors....Admin ought to be ashamed:disappointed:

What are you talking about its only a bit of spare change !

Is anyone actually getting paracetamol, ibuprofen, or aspirin on prescription?

beats joining the back of an A&E queue with people with graised knees and runny noses wasting everyones time for 4 hours at a time. hot!

I work in pharmacy and can tell you nearly every other prescription has paracetamol on.It is probably in the top 20 most prescribed items in England.It's one of the easiest and safest way's for GP's to get patients out of the door & onto the next patient.

I pre pay for my prescriptions around £100 a year. Following a stroke in my 30's I am on medication for life including an aspirin a day, and although it would be more convenient to collect it with my other meds I buy it separately from Home Bargains or somewhere similar for around 50p for a months supply

good post op. You need to be looking out for the PL product license number. Many of the supermarket own brand medications are exactly the same as the branded ones,. If the PL number is the same, it's the same formulation.

The NHS cost IS NOT £8.20 for a 0.19p box of paracetamol. This is total NONSENSE.

I'll repost my earlier post, as you seem to have missed it.

Let's start off with some solid facts. According to the British National Formulary (aka BNF) which provides prices for virtually all NHS medication, the NHS current cost for 16 generic paracetamol tablets is £0.48 and £0.78 for 30 tablets.

It's fair to say supermarket prices may be a little cheaper, but they are often selling commonly used meds as loss leaders to get people into their stores. However, the NHS is most definitely NOT "paying 30 times the actual price".

Here's the BNF costing for Paracetamol:



HTH :wink:

In agreement, OP. Thanks for posting!

Totally applaud the OP's aim and message. I just bought paracetamol from Aldi for 19p! Ibuprofen is similarly priced. But sadly even if everyone bought their own painkillers, it won't in any way save the NHS from bankruptcy and that's ignoring the fact all in Scotland, Wales and NI get free prescriptions.

NHS budget 2015/16- £114 billion http://www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/thenhs/about/Pages/overview.aspx
£80 million