Re: medicare and cost of prescriptions etc.

[Guest guest]

Chonette,

Wake Up Girl. :-) The question on the table is whether people in Britain

diagnosed with an incurable disease get their medications for free. Can you

tell us?

[Guest guest]

Sorry, I did not mean to post that one, it was late and got my postings

wrong. It happens to all of us sometimes. Being awake late at night might

not be quite being awake on your brain.

But here is the one I posted to Jim days before.

Chonette

Dear Jim,

Before you are 60 you have to pay for your prescriptions, but that is only

something like £6.00 for one item, £19.00 for 3 items, I can't remember the

exact amount, but something like that.

You can also get a pre-payment prescription for 4 months £33.00 and for a

year £91.00.

So any drugs you are prescribed will cost you only that, no the cost of the

drugs.

I tell you something that happened to me a couple of weeks ago.

The consultant had prescribed calcium-Vitamin D for two weeks, and run out

so I went to ask the pharmacist if I could get the same calcium without

prescription. She said I could and a box of 100 was £16.00. I worked out

that having 2 weeks prescriptions at the time was more expensive than buying

a box of 100 myself. So when I saw my GP the next week I told her about it

and she gave me a prescription of 200 tables of the calcium, which would

have cost only £6.00, but because I got a 4 months prepayment prescription

card it did not cost me anything.

So I do not know if you can call this free or no, but if for £91.00 per year

you can have all your drugs then I guess it is not too much. On the other

hand if Medicare thinks that we are paying even it is a small amount, then

it is another thing.

I think the cost only covers the administration.

The NHS do not do Rituxan, also Rituxan is not approved by the CLL protocol

in the UK for first time treatment on its own or with combination chemo

first time, It is done as a second time after you come out of remission with

Fluradabine, Chlorambucil or whatever chemo you had the first time.

I have been trying to get this and I now know it will be difficult to do it

here.

I hope this helps, if you need me to find out any other thing I will be

happy to ask the doctors here or some other way.

regards

Chonette

Message: 5

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 22:44:17 EDT

From: Sam87107@...

Subject: Re: medicare and cost of prescriptions etc.

Chonette,

Wake Up Girl. :-) The question on the table is whether people in Britain

diagnosed with an incurable disease get their medications for free. Can you

tell us?

[Guest guest]

Who are you SAM? speak to me

Jim McVey

From: Sam87107@...

Reply-

Subject: Re: medicare and cost of prescriptions etc.

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 22:44:17 EDT

Chonette,

Wake Up Girl. :-) The question on the table is whether people in Britain

diagnosed with an incurable disease get their medications for free. Can you

tell us?

[Guest guest]

Hi Jim and all,

Sam is a woman named Ann. In fact she posts pertinent info from time to time on

CLL as she did today concerning Pentostatin and rituxan, a very timely post and

she is actually a very helpful poster and reporter of CLL information.

I noticed her post earlier about Chonettes mistake on posting info on UK

medicare info etc. concerning when the government pays etc. Actually she meant

it as a joke, a sort of woman to woman or person to person light sarcastic

humor. As you know, sometimes things typed out often loose the real meaning and

especially often lose the humor meant simply because we can't see the persons

smile or hear the joke in their voice. The typed word is more harsh and she

didn't mean it that way.

Actually I hope we don't scare her off with our overprotective nature, she has

thus far been a good friend and fellow reporter on CLL info etc. I'm sure we

will all get to know her better in the future as a good fellow interested

patient.

Hope all is well Jim, it was sure nice meeting you at the meeting last week and

I am looking forward to seeing you again at the next meeting. I also

appreciated so very much your kind help and attention to my need for info

concerning my Dads situation with that Rituxan info you helped me with. Thanks

again.

Unfortunately Dad had to go into the hospital Sunday morning as he had severe

Chest pain, but fortunately he will be home again this afternoon, apparently it

wasn't a heart attack after all, but instead an inflamation of the pericardial

sack around the heart making it difficult for the heart to beat properly. A

close call, but it turned out all right. Lordy, these human bodies are a

constant source of mystery and facination aren't they.

Talk soon, Thanks again, Kurt

Re: medicare and cost of prescriptions etc.

Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2004 22:44:17 EDT

Chonette,

Wake Up Girl. :-) The question on the table is whether people in Britain

diagnosed with an incurable disease get their medications for free. Can you

tell us?