New laws regulating the price of medicine have come under fire again — this time from the National Association of Pharmaceutical Wholesalers (NAPW), which says that while medicine prices will be regulated, the fees wholesalers may charge will not.
The NAPW said it has been advised by its lawyers that while the Medicines and Related Substances Act, which came into force on Friday, provides for a single exit price on medicines and regulates dispensing fees, it does not provide for an appropriate fee to be charged by wholesalers.
He said that instead of determining an appropriate fee for wholesalers, the regulations merely provide that a ”logistics fee” must be determined by agreement between wholesalers and manufacturers.
This leaves them at the mercy of manufacturers who could determine what they pay wholesalers for their services, ”if anything”.
”We feel very vulnerable,” NAPW president Trevor Phillips said. ”If they want to they can make us buy and sell at the single exit price.”
He said that some manufacturers have already set up exclusive distribution agencies, leaving the wholesalers out.
”We will be forced to operate free market principles in a regulated environment,” he said.
The association met Department of Health representatives on Wednesday and aired its concerns, and felt ”confident and hopeful” that it will get an answer. Earlier the association said that if it does not, it will have to resort to the courts.
Phillips said he has also been advised that Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has acted beyond her powers in bringing the regulations into effect without the set manufacturer’s fee.
”This means that where the minister decided to introduce a single exit price she was also obliged to determine an appropriate fee to be charged by wholesalers. Where the minister has failed to do so, she has acted ultra vires.”
The association has submitted a mechanism for computing a proper wholesaler’s fee.
The Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa has already said that limits on dispensing fees will ruin pharmacists and at least one major manufacturer has said that the single exit price system might make it reconsider its investment.
The Department of Health was not immediately available for comment. — Sapa