Millions being wasted on medicines, provide for need not profit in the NHS

As the NHS privatisation bill makes its way through parliament which looks likely to win support their from the 3 capitalist parties. A news item came to my attention
The NHS in the South Central region says wasted medicines are costing it £20m a year.

Health chiefs said the money lost across NHS Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Isle of Wight could pay for 785 more nurses.

Unused or partially used medicines cannot be recycled and have to be thrown away.

An NHS spokesman said patients should think about what they were ordering and only ask for what they needed.

He added: "Any other medicines can be dispensed when needed at a later date."

Nationally it is believed people store about £90 million worth of unused prescription medicines at any one tim


Further proof i'd say taht there is huge waste in competition and further dose's of competition introducing more market forces into our NHS will result in more results like this. Leading to waste and more bureaucracy .

The NHS and medicine should be produced and services met with the idea of meeting peoples needs not creating vast waste in competition sake for the benifit of a fews profits.

This NHS bill mthe government wants to put forward will increase the chances of this sort of event happening if thebill is not stopped.

Only united mass action on the scale we havent seen for a long time with trade unions, workers and service users with strike action a threat at the heart of it can defeat this bill and save our NHS.

prescription charges to rocket

As we hear another way of drawing more money into the governments coffers which i fully expected would happen is the raising of prescriptin charges

Patients in England will have to fork out £7.40 a time for pills and ­medicines dispensed by their doctor – an increase of almost 3%.

The increase angered campaigners who have been calling for the charges to be scrapped ­altogether, as they have been in other parts of the UK. Prices will go up on April 1, the same date Scotland joins Northern Ireland and Wales in ­abolishing charges.

The British Medical ­Association slammed the rise, calling it a “tax on the sick” and an “absurd postcode lottery”. Nanette Kerr of the National ­Pharmacy Association said: “Patients on low incomes who do not qualify for exemption will suffer the most.”

Dental charges are also rising, with a check-up increasing from £16.50 to £17. Fillings and root canal work will go up from £45.60 to £47 and more complex jobs such as dentures and bridges will increase by £6 – from £198 to £204.

This as i said was inevitable i feel as the tories who cant stand us common people getting free health care it really gets their goat always saw the raising of prescription charges as a easy target to go after.
But this doesnt make this latest decision from the tories any less painful to working class people. People who are already struggling to get by and feed themselves while loosing jobs, paying more in tax's and food and fuel prices are shooting up.


I dont see how the government can justify these rises in times of hardship for all. It is just fankly another attack on the working class as i see it.

This will affect the old and the frail the most i feel as they area lways the ones forgotton about and find it hard to get out of their houses to buy their medicines they require.
I feel they should look into providing reductions or discounts for the most in need of these prescriptions instead of a blanket rise in the prices of these .