• Res Social Adm Pharm · Feb 2018

    Knowledge and attitudes to prescription charges in New Zealand and England.

    • Pauline T Norris, Sarah E Wilson, James A Green, Jessica Gu, Shelby Goddard, Logan R Deadman, Jennefa Dai, Kelsi Fastier, Christina Kothapally, Wendy Shi, Aleisha Whyte, Haleema Aslam, Raeesa Desai, Nicole Wood, and Chris G Sibley.
    • School of Pharmacy, University of Otago, New Zealand. Electronic address: pauline.norris@otago.ac.nz.
    • Res Social Adm Pharm. 2018 Feb 1; 14 (2): 180-186.

    BackgroundPrescription charge regimes vary between countries but there is little research on how much people know about these or support values underlying them.ObjectiveTo explore, in New Zealand (NZ) and England, the public's knowledge of, and attitudes to, charges and whether knowledge and attitudes varied by demographic characteristics or by values about entitlement to public goods.MethodA questionnaire was developed and administered to people over 18 recruited in public places in NZ and England.Results451 people in NZ and 300 people in England participated. Less than half in each country knew the current prescription charge. In each country 62% of people were unaware of arrangements to protect people from excessive annual charges. Support for free or lower cost medicines for children, people over 65, people on low incomes, people on benefits, and people with chronic health problems was higher in England than in NZ. Support varied by participants' demographic characteristics and, in the case of people on low incomes and people on benefits, by values about universal entitlements.DiscussionGaps in knowledge, particularly about mechanisms to protect people from high costs, are concerning and may lead to people paying excessive charges. There was consensus about the elderly, children and the chronically ill being "deserving" of lower prescription charges, but people who did not believe in universal access to public goods appeared to see people on low incomes or benefits as less "deserving". In general, public views resembled those underlying the prescription charge regime in their country.Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…