Free health care is proving costly for business - Sue Webber

Credit where it’s due; three years ago, when the first wave of Covid abated, the SNP Government launched the NHS Pharmacy First Scotland service to encourage people to seek advice about minor illnesses and common conditions from their local chemist.

Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for the Lothians

By opening the age-restricted minor ailment service to all, the aim was to relieve massive pressure on GPs by empowering pharmacists to treat minor complaints like earache, sore throats and urinary tract infections without the need for a doctor’s prescription, or to refer on for further consultation.

Backed by a £10m investment over three years, it made sense to harness pharmacists’ medical knowledge, and there was no political squeamishness about using what are clearly private, for-profit, health businesses because there was no cost to the patient.

Now Pharmacy First Plus (PFP) goes a little further, guaranteeing an easily accessible service for a minimum of 25 hours per week, 45 weeks a year, but like all retail businesses pharmacies are battling with rising costs, and just last week Boots announced it was to close 300 shops across the UK. But unlike other shops, Scottish pharmacists provide services for which government controls the payment.

I visited Boots’ Gyle branch last week to see how pharmacists deliver for the community, and there is no doubt PFP is now as much a part of our health care system as free prescriptions. Except they are not free, and the SNP Government does not control the real price. Government funding for prescriptions and PFP do not cover the actual cost, which cannot be passed on to the real customer, the patient, because the SNP says it must be free.

And where the government could help make efficiencies, like digitising prescriptions as has happened in England, the SNP has been inexplicably slow to act.

At least Boots has economy of scale and can find ways to manage costs, but others are not so fortunate, like Colinton Pharmacy Ltd which has just two shops. It provides the same essential services, and its proprietor wrote to me and other MPS last month in some despair after a new Scottish Government offer was rejected as insufficient.

“The medicines we buy on behalf of the NHS to fill prescriptions are costing us more than they ever have and, in some cases, sourcing them is harder than ever,” she wrote.

“Some medicines are now costing more than we are paid by the government for them, so we are supplying at a loss to maintain continuity of care for our patients” she said, while the Community Pharmacy Scotland trade association reported members “having to borrow to keep their doors open”.

It’s an intolerable situation when the SNP seemingly cannot accept the impact of its own policies and expects businesses to absorb costs, while giving everyone free paracetamol. Opposing privatisation of health care is all very well until it comes to expecting private businesses to pay for it.

“The impact of insufficient funding on businesses and communities alike is devastating, our community pharmacies have many elderly patients for whom we provide a free, regular medicines delivery service” says Colinton Pharmacy.

That is what the SNP puts at risk and the choice is clear; either pay a fair rate to sustain an expensive system, change the system or watch good businesses close.

Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative Lothian MSP