Friday’s Constitutional Court judgement on medicine pricing achieved nothing for the consumer and sowed more confusion, the Democratic Alliance said.
”The Constitutional Court has overturned a judgement of the Supreme Court and thrown the contentious matter of the medicine-pricing regulations back into the hands of the very people who were unable to find a solution to the problems in the first place,” a statement from Dianne Kohler-Barnard said.
”The upshot of it is that this [judgement] has thus far achieved nothing for the consumer and has, indeed, merely sown more confusion where confusion already reigned.”
The court earlier set aside a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that new medicine-pricing regulations be declared invalid, and ordered that the dispensing fee be revisited by the Department of Health’s pricing committee, with oral submissions allowed.
It also ordered changes to wording in the legislation to be published within 60 days.
Kohler-Barnard hopes the minister of health will act in a manner that balances the interests of patients with the need to sustain the pharmaceutical industry.
The Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa (PSSA) and the department’s representatives at the judgement, handed down by Chief Justice Pius Langa, said they were both ready to begin work on a new dispensing fee — the maximum a pharmacist can charge for dispensing medicine.
PSSA president Clive Stanton said pharmacists will not overcharge customers while the new fees are discussed, and if they do so, they will be subject to peer review. — Sapa