Pharmacists don’t set drug prices

YOUR report headlined ‘Pharmacists have to swallow similar medicine as taxi drivers’ (Irish Examiner, November 17) contained several inaccuracies and was incorrect in its basic premise that pharmacists are uncompetitive and facing major regulatory liberalisation in the new year.

The contention that lack of competition causes high prescription prices is wrong. Medicine prices are set by agreement between the Government and the drug manufacturers and are based on a weighted average of the prices set in a number of other EU countries.

Pharmacists have no control over this pricing agreement. In fact, medicines prescribed for medical card patients (which constitute roughly 75% of all medicines supplied under the various State schemes) are provided at an economically unsustainable zero rate mark-up by pharmacies.

An economic analysis by Price Waterhouse Coopers for the Department of Health showed that pharmacists provide essential services more cheaply than the State itself could deliver them.

Making antibiotics available without prescription, as your article seems to suggest, would inevitably lead to over-use thus increasing bacterial resistance to these drugs and potentially worsening the MRSA problem.

Pharmacists don’t fear competition. Ireland already has the most liberal and competitive pharmacy market in the EU. There is a higher proportion of pharmacies per head of population in Ireland than almost any other country in the EU — an average of 1: 2,800 people compared to a European average of 1: 5,105.

The restriction on foreign-trained pharmacists from establishing new pharmacies is not unique to Ireland, but is also a feature of regulation in several other EU states.

We are one of the few countries where there are no restrictions on who can establish or operate a pharmacy. In most EU states only pharmacists can own a pharmacy and there are population or geographical criteria for the opening of new pharmacies.

The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) last year found Ireland had the most deregulated pharmacy market of all 25 EU member states. Similarly, a separate study entitled Competition in Professional Services, published last year by the EU Commission, concluded that Ireland has the least regulated pharmacy market in Europe.

Pharmacists are trained healthcare professionals, experts in medicines, and their advice is sought by thousands of people every day, without appointment and free of charge. Pharmacists do much more than “simply filling out prescriptions written for them by doctors”.

Dispensing a prescription involves screening it for problems, for example incorrect drug dosage or duration of drug treatment, drug-allergy interactions and clinical abuse and/or misuse, and also identifying any side-effects and adverse reactions, interactions or therapeutic contra-indications that may be encountered. Every pharmacist identifies several major or minor prescription errors on a daily basis. Their regular discreet interventions on behalf of patients avoid potentially serious outcomes.

Darragh J O’Loughlin MPSI MMII

Seapoint

Barna

Co Galway.