Keep Free Prescription Promise
posted: 07/12/2009
A simple email now to your MP could help Gordon Brown keep his promise. Over a year ago, at the Labour Party 2008 conference, Gordon Brown pledged to scrap prescription charges for all people with long-term medical conditions, including HIV. He didn’t say when he would scrap the prescription charges, leaving us all waiting in the dark. We are still waiting.
People with some health problems never have to pay prescription charges. But the list of conditions that passport people to free prescriptions hasn’t been updated since it was written in 1968. HIV is not on the list, simply because HIV was discovered almost twenty years after the list was made.
While HIV medicines themselves come free because they are prescribed by the hospital, other medicines (for depression, anxiety, and everything else) have to be paid for.
Many people with HIV have no right to free prescriptions and these costs rapidly mount up. Some people cannot afford to collect the drugs they need from the chemist.
Actions, not words
Please email your MP to ask the Secretary of State for Health for the abolition of prescription charges for people with HIV and other long-term conditions.
Easy-peasy
Simply click the link, then add your details and it will write a custom letter from you to your MP – please be patient while it writes your personalised letter.
Disunited Kingdom
Each prescription item now costs £7.20 in England. Wales has already abolished prescription charges, Northern Ireland abolishes them in 2010 and Scotland will abolish them by 2011 - meanwhile Scotland is cutting the cost year by year - they are £4 now and will be £3 from April. England? they went up in April again to £7.20.
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