The NHS should not have to pay for your paracetamol At last, some good news. The NHS, facing a fiscal black hole of £2.45bn this year, and a projected gap […]

At last, some good news. The NHS, facing a fiscal black hole of £2.45bn this year, and a projected gap of £22bn by 2020, has decided to stop trying to be like Sainsbury’s.

If the chief executive of the NHS England, Simon Stevens has his way, the service will cease prescribing things which are easily and cheaply available elsewhere, such as Omega 3, fish oil, gluten-free food and, er, travel vaccines.

Did you know the NHS spends nearly £10m a year vaccinating people who are about to go on holiday? And £88 million on prescribing paracetamol? If you get paracetamol from your family doctor, the cost to the nation is around a fiver. If you buy a packet over the counter, it costs 49p.

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“There’s £114m being spent on medicine for upset tummies, haemorrhoids, travel sickness, indigestion, [and] and that’s before you get to the £22m-plus on gluten-free that you can also now get at Morrisons, Lidl or Tescos,” says the chief executive, citing a list of 10 items to be given the chop but suggesting that there could be plenty more things which simply do not fall within the NHS’s aegis but which you can also get on prescription, such as paracetamol, nit lotion or sun-tan lotion.

Yep. Ambre Solaire, on the good old Health Service.

What about people who can’t afford it?

Of course this will provoke the most almighty row. I wrote about the madness of the NHS prescribing paracetamol about a year ago (a piece which I now fondly imagine may have been read by Stevens himself), and got a huge response from aggrieved people who said they lived in chronic pain and were obliged to take paracetamol every day, all day. What about people who can’t afford to buy gluten-free food?

Well, perhaps some sort of legal acknowledgement ought to be made for people who qualify for free prescriptions and suffer from a chronic condition. But that surely must be a limited group.

I suspect GPs will be delighted about this ruling. Because now that the boss has spoken, there’s one less thing to worry about. They don’t have to reach for the moral high ground and say: “I’m not going to prescribe you suntan lotion because you can get it very cheaply on the high street.”

They can now say “I’m not allowed to prescribe it,” which is of course far simpler.

I went to the GP the other day because I believed I had a splinter of glass in my foot. He looked at it and declared there was nothing there. But he then prescribed me a large tube of foot lotion. And when I say large, I mean really large. The sort of thing that would cost £20 at the chiropodist. I didn’t ask for it, or even discuss the dry nature of my feet.

Maybe he wanted me to go quietly. Or, more importantly, quickly. GPs now are under such time pressure that it is far easier to slam out a prescription than to patiently explain to a parent that no, head lice on the kids are not life-threatening and yes, you can easily buy some Lyclear from Boots.

It’s my right

“Oh, but it’s my right,” people say. Frankly, I wish people would stop cantering on about their rights with regard to the NHS. The NHS is our joint responsibility and if we drain it dry because of a perceived right to claim free suntan lotion and travel vaccines, it will be our fault. Although it is clear that the sense of the NHS as a national jewel is also a very useful asset to it, and to us, its beneficiaries.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if we had the same sense of outraged ownership – and indeed, love – for other state-provided services, such as education?

If we all felt it was our right to be educated brilliantly by the state, and people of influence and power jumped up and down and protested every time a school was underfunded or funds were withdrawn for key items such as text books, I can’t but think that our schools and children would benefit hugely.