Letter: No simple prescription for drug bill

Sir: David Sharpe (Letters, 14 March) advocates that where GP prescriptions call for 60 or 90 days' treatment, a 28-day limit should be placed on the quantity to be dispensed at any one time.

I hope he is not suggesting that NHS patients should be required to pay two or three prescription charges instead of one, or that retail pharmacists should receive two or three NHS dispensing fees at the taxpayers' expense instead of one?

Your other correspondent on the same topic, Selwyn Learner, did seem to advocate that young asthma sufferers should be prepared to pay three or six prescriptions charges instead of one for a three-month or six-month course of treatment, which would yield pharmacists three or six dispensing fees instead of one. Is there not an element of financial self-interest in what the pharmacists are proposing at the expense of patients and/or taxpayers?

Yours faithfully,

IAN McKEE

Edinburgh

14 March