Prescriptions: Fees and Charges
(asked on 21st July 2016) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 30 June 2016 to Question 41004, what the cost to the NHS was of financing free prescriptions in 2015-16.
This question was answered on 5th September 2016
Assuming that for each prescription item a prescription charge would have been paid, the revenue foregone from providing free prescriptions during 2015-16 was £8 billion. However, as many people could limit their total prescription costs by purchasing a Prescription Prepayment Certificate in the event that they were no longer exempt, we estimate that the actual revenue foregone was in the region of £2 billion.