Revealed: How prescriptions can cost FOUR times usual shop price
PEOPLE are wasting money paying NHS prescription charges for medicines that can be bought straight off chemists’ shelves for a fraction of the cost.
Doctors regularly prescribe treatments, such as creams and pills, which pharmacists also sell for a lot less than the standard £8.20 NHS charge.
Among the examples found by The Mail on Sunday is aqueous cream for eczema sufferers. In Boots, a 500g pot costs £4.09 – less than half the prescription cost.
In fact, of the 15.6million prescriptions that doctors made for skin-softening ‘emollients’ in England last year, two-thirds cost less than £8.20 when bought straight from the chemist.
Similarly, in 2014 doctors made 7.7million prescriptions for hydrocortisone creams, often used for skin conditions like eczema and dermatitis. But the drugs cost less than £8.20 in about threequarters of these prescriptions.
A 15g tube of Hc45 hydrocortisone cream costs just £3.79 on the high street.
Glucosamine tablets are fre- quently prescribed to patients who are suffering from arthritis or rheumatism. But a box of 30 pills costs only £1.99 – less than a quarter of the prescription charge.
And a two-week supply of hay fever tablets, containing cetiri- zine hydrochloride, will set you back just £4.49 if purchased off the shelf.
Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients Association, said people should carefully examine prescriptions for everyday treatments to see if they could get them more cheaply straight from a chemist.
She added: ‘I think that GPs also have some responsibility to inform their patients if they believe what they have prescribed could be bought over the counter for less, because most people won’t know that.’
Over the last four years, the cost of the prescription charge – which only applies in England – has risen by £1.
Ministers argue that it is needed because it raises about £500million a year for the NHS.
They also point out that nine in ten prescriptions are handed out for free, because so many are for exempt patients such as children and the elderly.
But many doctors and pharmacists believe that the prescription charge is a ‘tax on the sick’ and should be abolished.
The charge has already been scrapped in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.