HEALTH expenditure could blow-out if moves to deregulate the pharmacy industry were to be enacted, Medici Capital Managing Director, Frank Sirianni, warns.
Speaking at the Medici Capital/Attain Business Brokers Pharmacy Business Dinner in Sydney last week, Sirianni noted that overall health expenditure was under control.
"We really don't have a fundamental problem in terms of the health expenditure in Australia," he said.
"When you compare us to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, we're well within the range.
"The reality is the deregulated markets such as the US, Canada and Japan is really where we see these high volumes of expenditure.
"So to some extent deregulation in the health space can be a very difficult thing, because it leads to adverse effects in terms of over consumption and from that point-of-view it's an issue we should be driving in public."
Sirianni's warning on the potential negatives of deregulation came in the wake of repeated calls for reform of the pharmacy sector's Ownership and Location Rules.
In recent months former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chair, Graeme Samuel, has claimed "there's no justification for these rules" and warning that they have stifled competition in the sector (PD 22 Oct).
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