Madam, – According to your report (Breaking News, July 27th) a Health Service Executive spokesperson is telling us that “people should be reassured by the fact that up to a few years ago, and for more than 30 years before that, the country was well served by around 1,100 pharmacies”.
Actually it was the present Minister who deregulated pharmacies in 2001, giving rise to the opening of 300 new community pharmacies since then. Clearly the Minister believed that deregulation was necessary to allow additional new pharmacies to open in order to improve public services. Why the volte-face now? This week, the HSE tells us that the old situation was actually a very good one, and we were “well served by 1,100 pharmacies”.
Where is the consistency here? Does this administration have any strategy beyond taking the next hill, and insulting our intelligence in the process? The truth is that the Minister and the HSE, unwilling to challenge more powerful vested interests in the pharmaceutical supply chain than independent community pharmacists, are targeting the weakest player in the most unfair manner. They could ensure that the burden of medication cost reduction is shared equally throughout the sector by a similar cut across the supply chain: 1. In the “factory gate price” of drugs as set between the HSE and the drug manufacturers. 2. In fees and mark-ups paid to pharmacists, under State drug schemes. 3. In the monies paid to wholesalers by the State. And by one additional measure already in place in most EU states – allowing pharmacists to substitute cheaper generic brands for doctors’ brand-name prescriptions.
These measures would undoubtedly upset the multinational pharmaceutical industry and the medical profession. They would also involve considerable sacrifice by the community pharmacists. But they would amount to a fair and reasonable strategy that shares the burden of cost reduction evenly across the sector, between all players.
This strategy would avoid alienating the community pharmacists, whose role in patient safety has historically been hugely undervalued, if not completely unrecognised, by the Government. In addition to sharing the burden equitably among all players, this plan would yield bigger savings than proposed at present by the Minister. It would avoid the negative social consequences of hundreds of independent rural pharmacies going to the wall, as will happen if the current proposal is implemented.
Many of these pharmacies are ones that opened in the past eight years as a direct result of the decision by the same Minister to deregulate pharmacy premises.
Why are the Minister and the HSE so resolute in their unwillingness to contemplate this scenario? Could it be that vengeance for last year’s High Court decision in favour of community pharmacists – the last time the HSE tried to bully them – takes precedence over the common good? – Yours, etc,
TIM DELANEY,
Gordon Street,
Ringsend,
Dublin 4.