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/ 6 November 2006
The last scuffle over the Medicines and Related Substances Act saw the health department announce a Âcomplex four-tier dispensing fee for pharmacists. This was intended to satisfy the requirement of the Constitutional Court, which last year ordered that an "appropriate" fee be drawn up for the purpose.
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/ 27 October 2004
In the soap opera of the new transparent medicine pricing system, the latest unforeseen twist is the Pharmacy Council’s list of extra items for which pharmacists can charge over and above a drug’s single exit price, plus dispensing fee. Pharmacists have made it clear they intend to maintain their earnings by any means possible, ensuring that they now appear as the baddies in the medicine-pricing saga.
The health care industry is increasingly coming under the beady eye of the Competition Commission and Competition Tribunal. The Council for Medical Schemes recently referred a commercial venture involving doctors in the Netcare group to the commission, believing it might not be in medical scheme members’ best interests.
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/ 17 February 2004
In the dying days of apartheid, FW de Klerk called his health minister, Rina Venter, and proposed the abolition of apartheid in state hospitals. During her subsequent investigations, Venter made a startling discovery: no laws specifically segregated hospitals. Doctors and hospital administrators had voluntarily enforced apartheid.
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/ 26 January 2004
A question put to me by a radio talk-show host last week suggested that the government’s publication of regulations to keep down medicine prices was an election ploy intended to win over voters. It would be rather stupid of the government not to do this before the election. But the truth is it’s been a long time coming.
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/ 11 November 2003
Afrox Healthcare CEO Michael Flemming minced no words in telling shareholders how the company derived its growing profits in the year to end-September. Medical inflation, he told Moneyweb, was responsible: the company charged about 10% more than the year before, while 5% was organic growth. Pat Sidley explains why a free-for-all in medical-aid rates is the ‘primrose path of dalliance’.
One of the biggest problems facing SA is the never-ending spiral of health-care costs. Despite measures, prices continue to rise. The latest intervention sees price-setting practices prosecuted, but to what effect?
Employers do not fully understand the minefield of employee health-care benefits — and have even less of a grasp when it comes to HIV/Aids.
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/ 4 February 1994
Local production of the life-saving polio vaccine has been stopped following a WHO report criticising the Institute for Virology’s facilities.
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/ 4 February 1994
The South African Catholic Bishops Conference believes priests don’t belong in politics but Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa is ready to defy this order.
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/ 4 February 1994
According to the TED, there are three high schools and nine primary schools in the Transvaal which still bar access by race.
This week a large group of Afrikaans rightwingers forced ANC deputy president Nelson Mandela to abandon his address to a student meeting at Tukkies.
?Helene Passtoors flew into Brussels yesterday hours after her release from Pretoria Central.
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/ 2 September 1985
A fact-finding delegation of Liberal International Parliamentarians has asked permission for a second time to visit imprisoned ANC leader Mandela.
So why did the Government dump the farmers?
South African tampon manufacturers say they do not use the fibre believed to cause toxic shock syndrome.