charges alone have been increased tenfold - from 20p in 1979 to f2 as of April 1. But the prescriptions are expected to rise in price again over the next two years at around double the
Already, though the average prescription cost is now £4.50, it is substantially cheaper to buy many drugs at retail prices han apartmental prescription have skyrocketed, to a minimum charge of £17 this year, with a ceiling of around £135 for plans include further increases in these
Tightfisted Tory policies mean that only the poorest among those needing spectacles now qualify for NHS frames - and these are available only from private companies. The DHSS is issuing vouchers entitling children under 16; students under 19; social security claimants and the means-tested poor to a pair of the cheapest spectacles available. For others who previously used NHS lenses or contact lenses there are massive increases in charges. Special contact lenses will in one leap increase nearly threefold in price, from £18.80 to a staggering £50. Complex spectacle lenses go up from £1l.75 to £29.
The price increases and axeing of NHS spectacles are part of the government plan completely to privatise the whole optical service.
But the notion of vouchers exchangeable for health services is being looked at much more widely by the lory leaders (who, in the words of Health Minister Kenneth Clarke at last year's Conservative Conference, have "stopped feeling quite so guilty about charging policy").
Last year a detailed "Think Tank" report from the reactionary Adam Smith Institute floated the idea of a credit card-style "medicard" which would be issued free to claimants and the means-tested poor, but which could he "topped up" by private insurance or cash payments, and would introduce the concept of cost and payment to the full range of medical and hospital services. Anyone other than the utterly destitute would need to pay for private medical insurance.
More recently there has been talk of "paying" for GP services with vouchers,
MASCO SUPER EXPRESS CHECKOUT SPRICE22200000 with GPs in turn being encouraged to "shop around" for the cheapest available hospital care for their patients. Kenneth Clarke, in denying that a voucher scheme is about to be brought forward, recently told a Financial Times conterence OD Private Health that he sees private GP ser-
ces as one way of cutting some of the 2
illion NHS bill for family medical se
Clarke also spoke approvingly of "benefits to the con"healthy private hospital
Even for those who disapprove of private medicine and choose to remain within the NHS, the constraints of cash limits on health authorities are raising the menace of increasing charges. The hard. pressed Croydon District Health Authority is no doubt only the first of many to discuss schemes for raising extra money which include charging in Patients theirs and facilities to the private sector in the evenings and at weekends. A redecoration of the tatty wards in Croydon's NHS hospitals is also seen as a way to lure in fee-paying private patients.
If we are not to wave goodbye for ever to the National Health Service, it is essential Socialist Viewpoint, No. 5, April 1985. Page 14
that the broader labour movement as well as health workers and health unions is tacks. The failure of NHS unions to take action to support the miners can now be seen as a vital missed opportunity.
To make a fightback credible, health inion leaders must be torced to give serious practical support to those workers — like the cleaners at Barking and Addenbrookes — who take strike action against cuts in NHS standards of patient care. And Shadow social services secretary Michael Meacher must be brought into line, and told by the labour movement to stop claim-
- to the delight of the mass media -"impossible" to abolish private medicine or to scrap prescription charges. If the labour movement leadership half as committed to defence of the NHS as the Tories are to carving it up for maximum private profit, we would at least have sizable mass campaigns on the issue across the country.
The huge potential support for a serious campaign in defence of the NHS, and its Towe saving poses of opposition to
underlines the need for urgent action.