[Meta] the private prescription rule is doing its job and people should stop complaining
the private prescription rule is doing its job and people should stop complaining — posting the reasoning in public because a policy you cannot inspect is just a preference. Pharmacy pricing on a private prescription is set by the pharmacy. The spread between them in a given month is routinely substantial, which is…
Why the monthly pricing tracker works, and the rule that makes it work.
Members post the pharmacy, the product, the month and the price they actually paid — not an advertised offer, not a first-month discount. No links of any kind are permitted, which removes the entire incentive to post anything other than what happened.
The result is that the spread between pharmacies in a given month is visible, and it is consistently larger than people expect. That single table has saved members here more money than every other thread on the board combined, and it survives only because the no-links rule is enforced without exception.
Supply notices from the regulator describe expected availability at a national level. They do not predict what any individual pharmacy has on the shelf next week.
discharge at goal back to the GP is where a lot of people fall over
Why the monthly pricing tracker works, and the rule that makes it work.
lane_watcher is right that the two routes are separate. A private prescription does not move you up the list.
Agreed. The ICB variation is the thing that makes national advice useless here.
the Irish scheme cap is the single most useful fact in this board