CWH ‘behaving like a big corporate’

CHEMIST Warehouse is being accused of acting like a “big corporate that doesn’t like the rules,” in its campaign to loosen the Pharmacy Location Rules, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia believes.

Speaking on 3AW, Guild Victorian Branch President, Anthony Tassone, questioned the group’s motivation for wanting to be able to provide Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) medicines without a patient contribution (PD yesterday).

“We have a pharmacy group behaving like a big corporate that doesn’t like things as they are, because they don’t suit its agenda or growth pattern,” he said.

“Why should we be unravelling the system that has produced equitable access [to PBS medicines]?”

Chemist Warehouse Chief Operating Officer, Mario Tascone, told 3AW that the location rules “stifle competition”, effectively locking the group out of regional parts of the country.

“We have these laws which prevent pharmacies from opening up next to one another,” he said.

“There’s no new licences, you have to buy an existing licence and once you do... you can only move it 1km every five years.

“It’s not such a big issue for Australian capital cities, because you’ll know there is a Chemist Warehouse on every corner in Melbourne, Brisbane, whatever, but if you go into regional Australia, where we’ve listed 60 regional towns... we’re blocked out from them, because we can’t open a new pharmacy there and the only road to get into those towns is to buy an existing licence.

“No one is ever going to sell us their licence in those towns, because they want to maintain the status quo, they want to maintain high prices.

“If you go and have a look at those towns people are paying higher prices for their medications compared to people in the capital cities and that’s not fair.”

When asked about the prospect of free scripts similar to Chemist Warehouse’s offer in New Zealand, Tascone said “we haven’t really worked out a business model” for the proposal aired in an interview with News Corp, which was published earlier this week.

“We’ve never even contemplated looking at a business model, because the laws prohibit discounting of co-payment, they only allow you to discount by $1,” he said.

“If the rules were [relaxed and] you could discount to whatever you like, free prescriptions are definitely an option we’d like to put on the table.”

Tascone warned that comparisons between the PBS and New Zealand’s system, failed to acknowledge the difference between the two models.

“From my understanding there might be a co-payment attached to the first prescription you get in NZ, the subsequent repeats of that prescription might not have that co-payment,” he said.

“They’ve also got a capped scheme [and] they’re having a lot of trouble listing new medicines.

“We’d have to look at the fine print [on any free script offer].”