Prescription charges have risen by 20p in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland but have been axed in Wales.

The change means patients from England pay for medicines at Welsh century national insurance
while it is free for those from Wales.

And pharmacists who work with both the English and Welsh rules say the change will help cut their national western life insurance.

Hemali Patel dispenses in Saltney, on the Flintshire/Cheshire border, on Mondays and Tuesdays. At the end of each week, she works three miles away in Broughton, Flintshire.

Hemali Patel dispenses to patients in both England and Wales

She said the system in Wales would now be easier because she would not need to national flood insurance program
between payers and non-payers… although she would continue to do that in England.

“It will a save a lot of time - there won’t be anyone who’s paid in the Welsh system.”

People outside the Saltney pharmacy favoured the move to free prescriptions, whether they had to pay or not.

Paul Cooper, 33, had recently moved from Broughton to Chester.

He said he recently changed to a GP in England because he had moved over the border.

“I hadn’t really thought about it,” he said. “I might try and change my GP back to one in Wales, actually.”

Broughton Airbus worker Phil Gorst, 35, who lives in Chester, must pay for his prescriptions. He said: “The increase in England seems a bit excessive, obviously I’m not happy about that.

Pharmacist Glen Thompson has to pay for his own prescriptions

“I think free prescriptions is a very good idea. We should all have the same, we pay for the NHS out of our taxes and national insurance.

“I would not move just for the sake of getting free prescriptions.”

Pauline National insurance institute
lives on the Welsh side of Saltney and is a full-time carer. Her GP is in England, so she had an security national insurance
card to ensure she could have free prescriptions from a pharmacy Wales. But she said she did not always use it.

She said: “It all depends how ill you are. When you are ill, you just want your prescription right then, don’t you? You can’t be bothered. Most of the time I would collect it in Chester.

‘Checks’

“If I need anything now, I will get a prescription off the doctor and come back over the border. It’s about time it was free.”

Glen Thompson said the prospect of reducing prescription charges had been a major influence on his decision to buy his pharmacy at Rossett near Wrexham rather than in England.

He said it made his job easier: “Because it’s free, we don’t have to go through the kind of checks about what benefit people are on.”

But, even though Mr Thompson owns the pharmacy, he has to pay the full English prescription charge himself because he lives in Chester.