Hi Breeze - when you were receiving Incapacity Benefit (IB), did you also get an Income Support (IS) top-up with that? Income-based ESA is now the equivalent of IS for people unfit for work - it can be paid on its own, for those who've not met the National Insurance conditions for the contribution-based benefit (ESA-C), or it can be paid as well as ESA-C. Obviously I don't know enough about your individual circumstances to say if you might be entitled to the latter kind - it depends on various factors like; do you live alone or not, how much do you have in savings, is your partner (if you have one) employed or not, what rates of DLA (if any) are in payment. And so on and so forth!
Free prescriptions and Housing Benefit, however, are still available if you have a low income (in your case, I am assuming that your sole income is ESA -C). Can you remember if you filled in a form called an ESA3? That's the one used by the decision maker to assess whether you are entitled to an income-based addition....