In the wake of the Constitutional Court judgement on the legitimacy of pricing controls in the pharmaceutical industry, spoke to pharmacists in the greater Johannesburg area to get their responses to the the decision and what it means for them
A pharmacist in Braamfontein, who would only identify himself as Mohamed:
”It’s been a frustrating 18 months, absolutely no certainty. Now we have another two months of hardship. Over-the-counter medicines are a significant part of our business — how can we survive on 26%? Where did they get that percentage from?
”I don’t have a problem with the prices coming down. The single exit price is a wonderful thing.
”I’ve had to sell my house, my car. I can’t afford to improve the conditions of my pharmacy, such as tiling or getting new counters.
”The government promised it wouldn’t license doctors but they’ve gone ahead and given them dispensing licences. Why do they have to interfere? Why should we subsidise the public when it’s the government’s job? Why not investigate the medical aids? Most patients, every year they complain about their medical aid going up.
”We have been advised to put our patients on generics. Why do we have to generic everything?”
Cobus Botma, May’s Chemist, Melville:
”We had to shed staff by about 10% because those that left were not replaced and we haven’t taken an interns. Our biggest problem was with medical aid companies who took time to process claims. In the past months we have been trading at a loss and also the credit card fees were eating into our profits.
”We appreciate the single exit price because it has levelled the playing field with the bigger players. But the big boys all have wholesale licences and some get up to 50% rebates, which make their margins better.
”We are happy with the industry’s future as long as there is a fair consultative process. We are a member of a number of pharmacy associations, we think it is very important that the community pharmacies survive.”
Rochelle Eizenberg, a homeopathic specialist at a Weleda franchise in Rosebank:
”We are a homeopathic dispensary primarily, but we’ve been affected indirectly. If a patient came with a script for allopathic medicine, previously, we went out of our way to get it but now they’ve taken all motivation away.
”People shop around a lot more. They call us for our knowledge and service, get different prices and go to one of the big chains.
”Some of the pharmacies have added an administration fee. We add R18 to every script.
”It’s a combination of factors. Business is bad here, there is no parking, Dis-chem is killing the small pharmacies. I’ve seen a similar process occur in Israel — a big chain comes in, buys in bulk and offers specials to the public. I understand that medicines need to be more affordable, but not at the expense of people who’ve studied for five years to become pharmacists.”
Natverlal Parshotam, Bree Street, Newtown:
”It’s not so bad for me because I’ve got low overheads. Take a look at this building, it’s 100 years old. It’s the big boys who are going to suffer. Every regulation must be tailor-made to suit the conditions of a particular country.
”Single-exit pricing is a good thing, but I feel our margins are still low.We are not going to survive on 26%, we need a minimum of 36%, because our overheads are phenomenal. People are going to lose jobs and I am barely surviving.
”Now I have to sell stationery and other things I never sold before, just to make up for loss in turnover.”