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Notes -
One quirk of the UK system is that drugs prescribed by an NHS doctor cost like $12 per prescription to pick up at a pharmacy. This fee is mostly the same regardless of medication.
But the old, the poor, and children are exempted from this fee. Because these people consume almost all drugs, this means that 95% of all prescriptions are free. So all the fee amounts to is an extra tax for 18-60 year old functioning, gainfully employed adults when they need medication. The US system reminds me of this.
One contributor to the UK's economic dysfunction is probably that we have a slim majority of the population with living standards that have been entirely insulated from the wider state of the economy, by pensions, welfare, or otherwise. Causes all kinds of political malincentives to place almost all the burden on a dwindling share of gainfully employed childbearing-age adults, while giving them nothing in return. The prescription exemptions are just a tiny fraction of the whole system.
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