The Malta Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises, GRTU this morning condemned the “unwarranted attack” by the Medical Association of Malta on the pharmacy licence system.
In a statement the GRTU said this system regulated privately run and owned pharmacies in the community which give excellent service to patients.
The system was solely responsible for the dispensing of medicine to most Maltese at no additional cost to patients, except the controlled price mark-up established at law.
Pharmacies in the community had no economic power to impose prices that were above the margins marked by importers on the wholesale price of medicine delivered to pharmacies and prices of medicines were the same all over Malta as competition at the pharmacy level did not, and could affect the price of medicines at the pharmacy level, the GRTU said.
“It is, therefore, incredible that an association of professionals can be so naïve and ignorant of elementary facts of economics to issue a press release so infantile and replete of errors as the one issued by MAM to comment on an issue which is really far out of its remit.”
The GRTU said the Health Minister’s proposal to allay the burden some doctors seemed to be complaining about by allowing pharmacists to prescribe medicines, besides being a proposal, had nothing to do with the issue of pharmacy licences and pharmaceutical prices, and MAM was rushing into judgement on this proposal at the risk of downgrading the esteem members of this union had in the public’s eyes.
Licences of pharmacies in the community were regulated by means of an agreement set up to include geographic and demographic principles.
The system ensured that investors would not simply chose the most attractive and profitable locations for investment in complete disregard of other localities which, being small, remote, or not representative of affluent sectors of the community would otherwise remain without a pharmacy.
It was a figment of one’s imagination to declare that more pharmacies would mean more competition that would drive down the cost of medicines.
In countries like Iceland and Norway, where the free market was allowed to reign and governments did not impose a system similar to Malta, the result was that pharmacies in the peripheries closed down leaving business to flow to pharmacies in the centres.
“Incredibly the Medical Association also links unsafe practices to the prices of medicines. This is a rather puerile way of putting forward an argument. There is simply no basis for this assertion.
“It is incredible that an association of medical professionals expresses publicly their ignorance of their understanding of the pharmaceutical market in Malta.
“They have no idea as to how the pharmaceutical supply chain operates and the economics of such a chain and the huge responsibilities of pharmacists, their fellow professionals.
“Unlike doctors, pharmacies have to earn their professional income from the small and controlled margin that remains after they deduct all expenses of running a modern pharmacy fully equipped to meet current market expectations pay all charges, pay all salaries and all costs of medicines and unlike other professionals all professional pharmacists employed in private pharmacies do not charge a professional fee to patients.”
The GRTU said that often enough, pharmacies in the community had to suffer the illicit competition of medicines sold on the market by medical practitioners who sold medicine to patients which was not in their possession.
In other countries there were situations where both dispensing pharmacists and dispensing doctors operated on the same market and this was especially true in remote rural areas.
But the reasons for this dual licensing system had nothing to do with the arguments presented by MAM.
GRTU said that notwithstanding this uncalled for diatribe by MAM against the professionals who owned and managed the pharmacies in the community, pharmacies were more than happy to work with the many doctors they hosted, in a meaningful relationship which benefitted the patient.