“Monopoly is good for you” position of Pharmacy Guild nonsense
The Pharmacy Guild’s spin that maintaining the current chemist shop owners’ monopoly is in the consumers’ interest is
simply self interest dressed up as altruism the Retailers Association said today.
“The claim yesterday by Pharmacy Guild President, Richard Heslop that a proposal to allow people other than pharmacists
to own chemist shops was ‘more about benefiting [supermarket] shareholders than consumers’ is just part of a long
history of the Guild trying to hide the real issue by raising fears about standards or loss of service,” said Retailers
Chief Executive John Albertson
The Guild should stick to the facts, which are:
What is proposed is only a change to who could own a chemist shop – it would not change who is able to dispense drugs or
give advice and does not impact on pharmacy standards.
Open ownership would enable a supermarket or department store to own and operate a pharmacy as a separate part of its
store (i.e. a pharmacy within a store, not ‘drugs on shelves’), employing a pharmacist or pharmacists at all times to
provide dispensing and advice
If the Health Professional Competency Assurance Bill is passed in its current form it would mean chemists shops were the
last retail monopoly in New Zealand.
Statistics New Zealand show chemist shops have the highest retail margin (11.1%) -of any retail category, which is what
you would expect under a monopoly. Supermarkets in contrast have the lowest margin at 2.3%.
It was not the supermarkets (as Mr Heslop implies), but the government’s health advisors who called for the end of the
pharmacists’ retail monopoly because those advisors were concerned about service and access to drugs under the current
regime. Officials identified a range of benefits from ending the chemist shop owners’ monopoly including: improved
mechanisms for ensuring the safe distribution of medicines savings for the Government / taxpayer in the form of lower
dispensing fees a more competitive pharmacy retail market that may reduce the costs consumers pay for unsubsidised or
partially subsidised medicines improved pharmacy services in remote areas more diversity of delivery of pharmacy
services the addition of the retailing expertise and experience of established organisations in New Zealand and
international pharmacy chains the removal of the cost of running the Pharmacy Authority (a district court judge
appointed by the Minister of Health, who approves applications to run a pharmacy which are otherwise contrary to the
ownership restrictions)
“If the Guild was really worried that health services are unsafe if they are not owned by health professionals, then
they should be arguing that our hospitals and health centres are unsafe because they are not owned by doctors,” said Mr
Albertson.
“They should also be bitterly fighting the ending of optometrists’ ownership monopoly (with the optometrists’ support!)
via the same Bill in which the chemist shop owners are fighting to maintain theirs.
“Of course they are doing neither of these things because the argument is nonsense. So is the argument that safety and
standards would go to the dogs if someone other than a pharmacist was allowed to own a chemist shop.”