It was galling to watch the president of the Pharmacy Guild weep and moan on TV last week about the planned changes to more efficient prescription access to 300 drugs on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
The planned changes mean people accessing these medications will be able to get 60 days worth of their medicine instead of the current 30 days worth, meaning one dispensing visit for 60 days instead of two.
I get that pharmacists will lose some revenue. Those needing the medication will save time and costs involved in getting out to collect them. The government will save costs.
I think the gains for consumers and government (taxpayers) outweigh the modest cost to pharmacies.
If you believe the weepy president of the Pharmacy Guild, this move will end some local pharmacies. If that the case, the businesses must not have been strong enough to start, they must have been relying on their government protected monopoly.
In my opinion, pharmacists have been protected for too long, and at too much of a cost to Australians.
24 years ago Aussie newsagents were stripped of the monopoly they had over local newspaper and magazine distribution. This was taken from us under the guidance of the Howard Coalition (Liberal / national) Government. It was taken from us without any compensation. The cost to the value of local newsagency businesses was tens of millions of dollars in business valuation and tens of missions of dollars of revenue.
Good retailers in the newsagency channel thrived. The deregulation made them evolve from agents into retailers.
While kicking the protection crutch of protection hurt and demonstrated a lack of care for local small business retail by the Howard government plenty of us got through it. For sure, compensation would have been good. But, maybe those leading the channel at that time did not have the skillset to achieve anything for newsagents. We’ll never know. It’s 24 years in the past now.
So, back to the pharmacists, while they can moan and complain, and cry, the reality is that the current approach to dispensing prescriptions is inefficient and expensive, to the benefit off protected pharmacists. Making them more efficient and saving money have to be a benefit to the health system and to Australians more broadly.
Local retailers I have spoken with since the tears were shed on TV a few days ago offered no support for pharmacists. It seems to me like they over-egged their response to what feels like a reasonable move.
In the 23 years since deregulation, as I have often covered here, newsagents have benefited from relying less on protection and more on being entrepreneurial. Most in our channel today have stable businesses, plenty are growing, with the growth com ing from decisions we make, rather than some legacy suppliers.
Footnote: I do understand that in some settings, particularly in regional and rural Australia, and in genuine community pharmacies, the move may present some challenges. I suspect that if you look at actual financial details in those businesses you will see the impact will not match the emotional outpouring of some in the last week.