Vol. 572 No. 2
24 Mr. Neville asked the Minister for Health and Children the number of the 175,000 people who were illegally overcharged for drugs under the drugs payment scheme between the period July 1999 and February 2001 who have submitted claims for a refund. [22463/03]
48 Mr. Howlin asked the Minister for Health and Children the number of people who have applied for refunds of sums they were overcharged under the drugs refund scheme; the number of repayments made to date; the total amount repaid; if his attention has been drawn to the difficulties created for some applicants by the requirement to produce receipts; if he will use health board and pharmacist records to ensure that all such over charges are repaid; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [22520/03]
I propose to take Questions Nos. 24 and 48 together.
My Department has put in place a refund scheme, operated through the GMS payments board, to process applications from persons who may be eligible for a refund due to the delay in putting the drugs payment scheme, DPS, on a statutory basis. The scheme was widely advertised in the national press on 26 June 2003 and again on 12 and 14 September 2003 to advertise the extension of the closing date.
At this stage there has been a substantial demand for application forms, with some 24,000 claims received by the General Medical Services Payments Board, the body charged with operating the scheme on behalf of the Department. The claims received are presently being processed and payment of refunds has already commenced. All claims received by the deadline of 31 October 2003 will be processed and paid by the end of December. The final cost and the numbers qualifying for reimbursement will not be known until all applications have been received and processed.
The question has been raised as to why members of the public have to apply for the refund, with supporting documentation – original receipts or printout from a pharmacy – while this data is already available to the GMS payments board.
The answer is that while a significant amount of the data is already available to the GMS payments board a certain degree of verification is required for the following reasons.
First, for claimants who spent under the old DPS threshold of £42 the position is as follows. Under this threshold the individual, or family, paid the pharmacist in full. As the pharmacist was not claiming any refund from the GMS payments board they did not submit these details. Therefore, no records of these transactions are recorded in the GMS payments board's database and these must be provided by either the claimant or pharmacist. Where the claimant may not have relevant receipts, pharmacists are providing copies of Med 1 forms with the necessary level of detail.
