Guild hails ‘dividend’

AUSTRALIA'S community pharmacies have helped deliver an “extraordinary dividend to taxpayers” as they have dealt with P S price disclosure over the past several years, according to Pharmacy Guild executive director David Quilty.

Writing in the Guild’s fortnightly Forefront update yesterday Quilty detailed figures which show the PBS has become the “most fiscally sustainable part of our entire health system,” contrasting a 2.9% forecast annual drop in pharmaceutical expenditures through to 2021 with Medicare costs which are predicted to rise by 4.4% per annum over the period.

He urged the government to provide a stable, sustainable policy environment to support the thousands of small businesspeople who had invested their livelihoods in the pharmacy sector.