Another slap in the face for the English
Why did Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledge yesterday, at the Labour Party Conference, to scrap prescription charges for people in England with cancer from next year? He said that anyone with a long-term illness would also be eligible, but the devil, as they say, will be in the detail. What’s the betting that ‘long-term illness’ will be strictly defined according to a woefully short and very controversial list of diseases and disorders drawn up in Whitehall by rich blokes in suits who have only ever suffered an occasional cold, or, if they do get seriously ill, are most likely to head straight to a private hospital for treatment?
In Scotland and Wales prescriptions were made free for everyone a few years back. They were free for everyone across the UK in the good old days before Thatcher’s cronies started tinkering. Had the PM chosen to instead announce the return of free prescriptions in England, bringing it in line with the rest of the country, that would have been an impressive comeback after months of relentlessly bad news for the government.
tags: Gordon Brown, government, Labour, NHS, policy, politics, prescriptions
