CLAIMS that patients in regional parts of Australia are paying five times more for some medicines than their metropolitan peers, are being dismissed by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.
Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chair, Graeme Samuel, launched a fresh attack on the Pharmacy Location Rules in an article published by the Newcastle Herald yesterday.
The article reported that research from "groups pushing the Federal Government to end" the Location Rules found that pharmacies operating in the Hunter region were charging significantly more for standard antibiotic syrups than discounters in metropolitan areas, who say they have been prevented from entering the area by the location rules.
The greatest price disparity was found at a Cessnock pharmacy where the medicine was 5.2 times more expensive than it would have been from a discounter.
"If you go into a town and there's one coffee shop and because of a lack of competition they charge $15 for a cup of coffee you'd be pretty outraged," Samuel said.
"If there was only one petrol station in a town and you were charged $4.50 per litre for petrol you'd be just as outraged.
"Yet because of these contracts between the Guild and the Federal Government that's the case for pharmaceuticals.
"There's no justification for these rules and they need to change because consumers are paying the price for the lack of competition."
However, a Guild spokesperson refuted suggestions that the community pharmacy sector had become a monopoly as a result of the Location Rules.
"When economists such as Graeme Samuel say there is no competition among pharmacies and that pharmacy is a monopoly - we say there is plenty of competition where the price is not fixed by the Government," the spokesperson told Pharmacy Daily.
"Claims that a particular medicine costs five time more in rural areas than in the city are just self-serving and misleading spin.
"While Graeme Samuel or his soul brothers at Chemist Warehouse may be able to find an aberrant example here or there, there are literally millions of cases of subsidised medicines being dispensed under the PBS across Australia with no such price disparity.'
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