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MEDIA RELEASE: PUBLISHING PRESCRIPTION COSTS WON'T SAVE MONEY
17 January 2008
Responding to the Public Accounts Committee recommendations to reduce the costs of healthcare, Progressive Vision, the classical liberal think tank, has said that patients and doctors, not by politicians, should determine prescriptions.
“Printing the costs of medicines on packaging will do nothing to reduce NHS costs. Patients will be influenced by what they actually pay, not by an irrelevant price on a packet.
“And recommending the use of generic, rather than branded, medicines could be the worst form of penny-pinching. Too often, the NHS would prescribe out-of-patent generic drugs rather than the latest medicines, which are still under patent.
“The solution is to replace the centralised bureaucracy of the NHS with a system of individual health savings accounts. That would put decision-making power in the hands of patients and doctors, not in the hands of politicians”
ENDS
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