Sir, – Differences in drug prices between here and Northern Ireland are as nothing when compared with those in the US. Last February, while I was swimming in Florida, a jackdaw stole my little bottle of glyceryl nitrate from my beach towel, first flinging aside the cap I had used to keep it out of the sun. It’s an over the counter medicine for “acute heart embarrassment”; here it costs around €16. In the UK, £6. In America, the identical little bottle is $196, “but only $160 if you have insurance, sir”! I nearly had a heart attack, but I waited to replace the bottle until we came back to this land of “socialised” medicine. – Yours, etc,
M ROSS-MacDONALD
Crinkill,
Birr, Co Offaly.