Spain to charge elderly for drugs

Spanish pensioners will have to pay for prescription drugs for the first time under government plans to curb the country's spiralling drugs budget.

Spain's minister of health, Celia Villalobos, announced last week that her government was going to introduce a “drugs co-payment system” by which pensioners, who currently receive prescription drugs free, will have to pay for drugs according to their incomes.

Ms Villalobos said: “It is neither fair nor reasonable that someone who is unemployed or a worker with three or four children …