Prescription charges

In the English NHS charges are made for prescription drugs, and the majority of adults (though not a majority of patients) are required to pay them. Charges were abolished in NHS Wales in 2007, Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland in 2010 and by NHS Scotland in 2011. In 2010/11, in England, £450m was raised through prescription charges, some 0.5% of the total NHS budget.

When the National Health Service was established in 1948 all prescriptions were free. The power to make a charge was introduced in the NHS Amendment Act 1949, and proposals for charges were a factor in the resignation of Aneurin Bevan from the Labour Government in 1951. Charges were introduced in 1952, by the Conservative government, at a rate of one shilling per prescription.

There were exemptions for people in receipt of National Assistance or War Disability Pension, children under 16 or at school, and venereal disease patients. In 1956 the rules were changed so that a charge applied to each item prescribed. In 1961 it was doubled to 2 s. Charges were abolished by the Wilson Government on 1 February 1965, but reintroduced on 10 June 1968 at the higher rate of 2s 6d, but with a wider range of exemptions. As of 2016, the prescription charge is £8.40.

Prescription charges and exemptions are administered by the NHS Business Services Authority.

The existing list of medical exemptions is essentially a list of conditions for which long-term life-saving medication was available in 1968, and it has never been revised since. The policy on prescription charges has been dismissed as a "dog's dinner" by the Social Market Foundation, who said in 2003 that the current rules on who pays for medicines and who does not are unfair and illogical.

In 2007, a survey conducted by Ipsos Mori found that 800,000 people failed to collect a prescription during 2007 due to cost.

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