Campaign update
August 20, 2013
There’s been a tremendous
response across the industry to
the campaign to keep pharmacy
viable in the face of the shock
Government acceleration of price
disclosure.
Thousands of people have
signed the petitions in pharmacy
and online – one pharmacy in
Burnie, Tasmania alone has
gathered over 3600 signatures
in the first week. It is very
disappointing to the Guild
and frankly shameful that the
Consumer Health Forum, Choice
and ACOSS have put their names
today (Tuesday) to a deliberately
misleading and ill-informed
media release about our petition
campaign. These organisations
have very unfairly alleged that
we want medicines to be more
expensive and that we are trying
to force the Government to back
away from price disclosure.
Contrary to the lies being told,
the Guild supports the objectives
of price disclosure and cheaper
prescription medicines and we
have worked closely with the
Government over many years to
achieve that.
But this needs to be done in a
sustainable way. There is no point
making prescription medicines
cheaper for the Government
if the end result is community
pharmacies going out of
business.
Whereas previous changes
were made in consultation
with pharmacists, this time the
industry has been blindsided
and individual pharmacies will
have no choice but to make
difficult decisions on jobs, patient
services, opening hours and even
whether they can stay open at all.
Fortunately, real consumers
know the value of community
pharmacy.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 20 Aug 13To see the full newsletter, see the embedded issue below or CLICK HERE to download Pharmacy Daily from 20 Aug 13
