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Pharma-goss With Rollo Manning
* ANOTHER CO-PAYMENT INCREASE FOR PBS SCRIPTS
* PSE - bulk supply or retail packs?
* Stilnox again
ANOTHER CO-PAYMENT INCREASE FOR PBS SCRIPTS
It is becoming as if every 1st January the co-payment for non PBS prescriptions rises.
It is almost as if it is legislated for that the consumer will continue to pay an increasing share of the medicine costs in Australia regardless of whether there are savings being made in other areas such as the price from the manufacturer, the wholesaler’s margin or the pharmacist’s fees.
A person paying $20 for a non claimable PBS item is paying $10.08 in fees.
The cost of the goods may have been as low as $3.
So why does the co-payment continue to rise and then put another chunk of items into the non-claimable list that evades all statistical summaries?
It just does not make sense to this column and it would be interesting to hear from pharmacists as to how they can justify the increase. Any takers?
It is probably a matter of doing so well that it is best to say nothing as one day it might get worse.
 There are so many questions the consumer should have about PBS pricing but the lobby groups that represent them fail to focus on the key issues.
It certainly is not easy to understand and the more it becomes confused the less likely it is to be understood by the un-initiated.
For example – the “additional fee” which the PBS Schedule describes as:
The allowable additional patient charge is a discretionary charge to general patients if a pharmaceutical item has a dispensed price for maximum quantity less than the general patient co-payment.
The pharmacist may charge general patients the allowable additional fee but the fee cannot take the cost of the prescription above the general patient co-payment for the medicine.
This fee does not count towards the Safety Net threshold.
The Fourth Agreement between “Community Pharmacy” and the Government states:
 The organisation that has been the bogey for pharmacists over the years – Choice – or the Australian Consumers Association – has a broad spectrum of consumer issues to tackle across the board and while health is high on its agenda – pharmacy is a difficult area.
Apart from Dr Ken Harvey there are few people within the organisation that really understand what is going on.
Who would know that the pharmacist should advise customers of the inclusion of the $3.63 additional fee?
And that it is not a government charge as in 21.3 above?
As for the Consumers Health Forum, it seems to be more concerned with the number of nominees it can get on quasi government advisory panels rather than the quality of the advice given.
The only mention of pharmacy matters is confirming positive action such as the quality use of medicine rather than the negative impacts government policy is having on the consumers it purports to represent.
The pharmacy profession continues to gobble up the treasures of opportunity and the consumer continues to pay more.
The nuances of government policy remain obscure to the layperson and the taxpayer (and also the health consumer) remains duped into thinking that responsible policy is saving money.
It may be from the viewpoint of the customer with their taxpayers hat on but as a consumer they are being manipulated for the benefit of the supply chain.
PSE – bulk supply or retail packs?
This column has long held the view that the obtaining of pseudoephedrine by raiding pharmacies for retail packs is a long an arduous way of obtaining the drug.
The recent raid on a Melbourne home that netted five million tablets in bulk containers is testament to that contention. (Herald Sun 19 December 2007).
 If you were in the business of making illicit drugs would you want to bother extracting it from tablets in a retail pack compared with obtaining the bulk supply or raw material from a manufacturer or supplier of the raw material?
Surely this must provide the bulk of the illicit substances on the street.
Maybe a reader can tell of any figures that are known by police on the prime source of PSE – bulk supply or retail packs.
The answer is necessary to find out how justified the calls for taking the drug off the market.
Such action might save the break-ins but would they solve the illicit drug manufacturing problem?
Maybe – let’s look into this further.
Taking the drug off the market may be inconvenience a lot of clients and there is no doubt that pharmacy break-ins will continue regardless of the amount of PSE held in stock.
Better security vigilance is the only way to stop break-ins and as soon as another chemical becomes a fad that will be targeted too just as morphine tablets were a few years ago and yet that is still on the market.
As for the five million tablets – where did they come from?
Probably Asia where the Schedule Four product in Australia is available freely in the retail shopping strips.
Stilnox again
Once more this drug is being linked to an accidental/suicide death allegation.
 Just how long this drug will remain on the market remains an ongoing saga and it is time that action was taken or statistics are revealed on just how many people have made the ultimate sacrifice at the hands of a drug which surely would not be missed by too many if taken off the market.
Maybe a comparison with that popular drug Placebo would tell us if it has any real benefits against the cost it seems to be talking up both in personal grief and column inches in the media.
Now we learn that the NDPSC is going to consider making the drug Zolpidem a Schedule 8 listing and the manufacturers have said they will oppose this.
More time, column inches, bureaucrat’s reviews, highly paid representatives’ time at meetings – make you wonder if the drug regulatory system is ready for democracy!
That’s all for now folks….
Comments please on any subjects in this column or suggestions for topics that “Pharma-goss” could address
Rollom@iinet.net.au
Visit my website at
http://www.rollomanning.com/site/home.htm
For a more complete array of recent speeches, presentations and articles.
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