IF IT were purely down to word count on objections to the Professor Stephen King review of Pharmacy Remuneration and Regulation, complementary medicines (CMs) issues, including homeopathy, appear to dominate.
Homeopathy products get a lot of airplay in some submissions to the King Review, especially from the input by Complementary Medicines Australia (CMA) and predictably from a number of homeopathy lobby and "research" groups.
Equally predictably, the proposal to remove homeopathy products from PBS dispensing pharmacies gains support from public health advocate Monash's Ken Harvey.
Others such as Blackmores, and the Consumers Health Forum of Australia (CHF) focus on the vexed question of the removal of certain CMs from "behind the counter" status, an implied indication of increased efficacy.
Blackmores have a full range of "Bioceuticals" 'Practitioner-Only' products which are "stored 'behind the counter' to ensure that consumers take practitioner advice on their health management and appropriate product usage".
"The option of removing access to 'behind the counter' storage is not supported by any evidence that there is a problem requiring correction," Blackmores said.
MEANWHILE in other areas, the Generic and Biosimilars Medicines Association (GBMA) argued economics against the option that "suppliers of PBS-listed medicines be obliged to ensure delivery to any community pharmacy in Australia".
"Placing the onus for distribution on suppliers of generic medicines will only add to the cost of doing business," GBMA said.
The Consumers Health Forum backed the option of 24-hour online access and dispensing machines with a hotline to a pharmacist, while debating strongly across other proposal elements.
Pharmaceutical industry peak body Medicines Australia chose not to respond to all the options presented, "because we are not convinced that a case for broad ranging and radical reform has been made", arguing that the system is not broken, but could always do with some fine-tuning.
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