Part of the problem is that some scripts are 30 days and others 28 so they are certain to slowly go out of sync.
I used to suffer that, so I skipped one of the 28 day drugs every 2 weeks to keep them in sync.
The government should ensure that all scripts which are likely to be taken together are the same quantity. There are so many inefficiencies in our health system like this, which would save everybody money.
Of course the pharmacists will complain about the loss of dispensing fees, however I have yet to meet a pharmacist who is struggling living below the poverty line!
BB
I realise that the reference to the poverty line is just a way of speaking but how would you know what your pharmacist is making? Do you know any well enough for them to tell you what their income is?
It is common for us to say “All [fill in profession] are wealthy and charge too much”, where doctors, lawyers and pharmacists are always the target but sometimes it is tradesmen and others.
Some are quite wealthy indeed but they are usually highly qualified, experienced, older practitioners or those who own practices so that their income is more than their own billable hours. That does not mean all of the target profession, especially younger ones who work for others, are rich.
If you google ‘pharmacists salary Australia’ you will get figures ranging from $32 to $80 per hour, with several around $50. Unless all those employment agencies are underestimating for some reason that is not a lot. More objective sources such as ABS do not provide data at the individual profession level that I can see. If anybody has a better source please speak up. These figures are not for the owners of high volume inner city pharmacies, which is a different question.
The topic of the loss of dispensing fees and how reasonable that may be has been covered at length here.
I know a few pharmacists and I can assure you that none of them are poor. Except for a few years when working as juniors they are very well paid indeed.
The fact is that pharmacy is one of the most protected businesses in Australia. There are many rules designed to protect pharmacists from competition. This costs the customers of pharmacists a motza.
There are rules which prevent non-pharmacists from owning a pharmacy, which prevent supermarkets (for instance) setting up in house pharmacies. There are rules dictating the location of new pharmacy shops, which directly protect inefficient existing pharmacies. Those rules were updated only a few years ago to keep a well known discount pharmacy brand from setting up new shops in country towns.
This is why I completely disregard their bleating about the “consequences” of doubling the number of tablets dispensed in a prescription. The system needs to be oriented towards the customer, not the pharmacist/owner.
That was discussed at some length in the other thread and I agree about them being protected. That lack of competition does matter. Whether the extra funds taken due to lack of competition find their way into the pockets of pharmacists or mainly the owners is a question that needs more solid data to decide.
We also need to point out that the Pharmacy Guild, who are opposing this change, do not represent pharmacists. They only represent owners of pharmacies, and commonly push for measures that, dare I say, oppress the pharmacists that they employ. There are even indications that the guild has been forcing their employees (pharmacists) to lie to customers about the potential effects of this change.
I can’t help but think that all the pharmacy ‘hand-wringing’ and opposition to the change in prescribing is the fear that customers may make less ‘discretionary spend’ as they are visiting the chemist a little less. What do others think about this….?
The industry submissions relating to business viability include models showing reduced profits associated with a decrease in takings from non-prescription sales. Some of that will relate to discretionary spend and some will be for items considered non-discretionary.
A possibility no doubt. How important it is would be hard to say. The whole industry is complicated by the different views of what happens in the pharmacy.
{edit} The Guild report on this topic does explicitly cost the effect of fewer visits resulting in lower retail sales:
The financial losses to each community pharmacy will accrue as a result of:
• The loss in dispensing revenues of, for most scripts, around $13.00 per script (in 2023-24).
• The loss in other retail sales caused by the reduced number of visits to pharmacies
(“footfall”), which is estimated to be, on average, around $20.00 in retail sales per visit foregone, of which a $6.00 gross margin is counted as a loss to the pharmacy (in 2023-24).
How accurate these estimates of discretionary spending are remain to be seen.
[end edit]
Is the pharmacy where you get professional advice about the side effects of medicines, drug interactions and minor ailments where you wouldn’t go to the doctor and where you collect your prescription drugs confident that they are the right substance in the right amount; or is it a shop where you get patent medicines, cosmetics, health related aids, supplements and whatever else happens to be in the bargain bin this week?
The answer is both of course. It suits some to emphasise the former but make money out of the latter.
Yes, and Glenn1’s comment above mentions an industry submission regarding this issue.
I can’t help but be relieved that, as a humble consumer pharmaceuticals in Australia are highly regulated (and I’m not in another part of the world where it is not so).
To facilitate the commencement of good faith negotiations, the Pharmacy Guild has offered to suspend its public information campaign and that has been accepted by the Health Minister and the Prime Minister.
Perhaps like the federal opposition they realised they were backing a very slow horse.
I hope the agreement to renegotiate the 5-year deal early will not see the government lose their nerve, that is the result will actually be targeted at better services and the maintenance (or increase) in availability of services and not just some general payoff to the Guild in order to have peace.
If this is not seriously lazy journalism and I am reading it correctly, it appears the crux of the pricing issue is that for eligible scripts a 60 day supply will be capped at the PBS $30. If one has a $5.60 script it appears that will be $11.20.
This is the approach mentioned in a submission from the Pharmacy Guild. Noting that a lower cap relates to concession card holders, so the $5.60 per month medicine would cost $7.30 for two months supply.
Unsurprisingly the Government spin seemed to concentrate on cases where the price actually halved, although the average per head saving may have indicated otherwise.
I have not seen anything that says there will be any change other than to the interval of co-payment for the specified drugs after their tranche takes effect. The co-payment itself remains at whatever it is for your concessional category and whether you have reached the safety net. So the idea of capping at $30 is misleading by my understanding because if you are either concessional or reached the safety net the co-payment is less than that.
Not quite, as nobody will pay more than $30 per script. A statement that the cost of qualifying medicines will halve would be misleading because of the reason you mentioned and also in relation to medicines costing less than the co-payment maximum for one month’s supply.
It has not been specified whether people deemed unsuitable to receive a prescription covering twelve months will be eligible for any savings at all. If they aren’t, they may also have been misled.
That is true but it is misleading if you then conclude that not going above $30 is all you can get. Oversimplification does not need to be false to mislead.
This is made plain in the links given above. If your doctor does not think your medication needs are stable enough to go on to 60 day scripts for any of your drugs then you gain no benefit from the change. The whole point is that doctors must think it is safe for each individual.
To be fair to the journalist the article was about the politics of the Guild vs the Government not trying to explain the whole scheme.
If any readers here are unsure I suggest they read the official links given above which explain.
I notice that the Guild has given up on the ridiculous claim that this change would cause a shortage of medicines, and are now just bleating about the real problem for them; loss of dispensing income.
But I also note that the health Minister said that the number of applications for pharmacy licences had increased substantially in the last few years, so maybe the Guild is shooting itself in the foot by allowing too many players into their protected market and diluting it across too many players.
And woe betide them if the Gov decides it would be good for supermarkets to have in-house dispensing of script medicines.
Using the US as example, Walmarts, supermarkets, Costco Warehouses, and their like competitors often have pharmacies.
An honest question - since a pharmacists must own a pharmacy in Australia and can own 4, how many of those pharmacies does the pharmacist actually work in during business hours. Staff ‘we’ deal with are usually qualified employees.
What difference in service or expertise are people afraid of if the dispensing and/or supervisory pharmacist is employed by ‘the owner pharmacist’ or say Woolies, Coles or ? The main variable is the business viability, hence the guild. I empathise with their need to have a profitable business but as with protecting QF, what is the end cost? I have not seen a capitalist yet that would not take whatever dollar was on the table if they could put it in their pockets; although most gravitate to the tables with the most dollars there is rarely a table left unattended.
