Monday 2 April 2007

The Wrong Prescription

From today, prescription charges are abolished in Wales but increased in the rest of the United Kingdom. This is monstrous, and would be so however the funding of the thing were arranged.

Health care through the National Health Service is nothing less than the citizen's right to freedom from ill health, just as the citizen has the right to freedom from poverty, to freedom from unemployment, to freedom from ignorance, to freedom from homelessness and squalor, and so forth. And equal citizenship is the basis of the United Kingdom.

If Wales can afford freedom from prescription charges, then why can't the rest of us? If Britain can afford the Iraq War (not to mention the planned Iran War), or the "renewal" of Trident, then why can't she afford to abolish prescription charges, a cruel tax on the sick? And when did I become less British than people living in Wales?

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