The NHS by Susan Cohen

Author:Susan Cohen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784424800
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

In 1962 the number of deaths recorded from lung cancer exceeded 100,000. In 1965 the government introduced a ban on television advertising of cigarettes followed by the appearance of health warnings on packets in 1971. This Ministry of Health anti-smoking poster (1965) aimed to discourage people on the grounds of the expense of buying cigarettes.

People’s lives were changed by the discovery of new drugs including chlorothiazide for heart failure (1957), pressurised aerosols for the treatment of asthma (1960), the broad-spectrum antibiotic, ampicillin (1961), and levodopa, which relieved the distressing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease (1966). Inevitably, the cost of supplying drugs continued to push up the NHS bill, and in 1952 the Conservative government introduced legislation to bring in a prescription charge of one shilling. Then, in 1956, the law was amended again to the effect that one shilling was payable for each item. Rising costs had to be seen in the context of better health and the reduced pressure on doctors and hospitals, but prescription charges were set to double in 1962. With a change of political leadership in 1964, the new Labour government began to tackle a re-organisation of the NHS, and abolished all prescription charges in February 1965. This quickly resulted in a 19 per cent increase in the quantity of items prescribed, and a 22 percent rise in the overall cost. Free prescriptions, had, as feared, encouraged some people to request all the cheaper items they had been paying for themselves, and alongside an economic downturn, Harold Wilson was forced, in June 1968, to reinstate a charge, this time of 2s 6d per item, albeit with far more exemptions in place.

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