Scare tactics and management issues 

Tony Jaques reviews the Pharmacy Guild of Australia's opposition to a policy aiming to reduce medication costs 

Image: RomanR | Adobe Stock

The issue strategy by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia to oppose making medicines cheaper may have been doomed from the start. And it tested whether a scare campaign can be effective.

Starting in about two weeks, more than 300 medications will progressively move from 30-day to 60-day prescriptions. The change will reportedly halve the cost of many drugs for chronic conditions, saving patients an estimated AUD 180 a year on each medicine, and reducing their need to visit overburdened General Practitioners (GPs).

The Australian government said six million people would save more than AUD 1.6 billion over the next four years because they’d be able to collect two months’ worth of medicine for the price of a single prescription. Over the same period, the change will save the government AUD 1.2 billion in prescribing fees paid to pharmacists.

This seemed to be a pretty attractive policy, which unsurprisingly generated enthusiastic support from doctors’ groups, the Heart Foundation and the Consumer Health Forum.

However, the Pharmacy Guild – the lobby group for community pharmacists and a major donor to political parties – launched a full-scale offensive to block the change, portraying it as an existential threat to its members. A well-funded and co-ordinated issue campaign included radio and TV interviews and advertising in newspapers, billboards, TV, radio, and social media, targeted at regional areas and marginal electorates.

The Guild also encouraged individual pharmacies to generate their own local media coverage (here and here) to further raise concern with the public.

Underpinning this issue management effort was a slate of carefully honed messages of alarm. The Guild said the change will cost over AUD 170,000 per pharmacy and claimed up to 600 community pharmacies will close, with a further 900 under financial stress. As a result, they claimed that 20,000 jobs are at risk (about 10,000 full time equivalents), 'predominantly women working part-time'.

They also argued that the pharmacies that remain open would reduce their hours, such as weekend trading, and reduce their services. Furthermore, they said the change would cause medicines shortages and "lead to hoarding and increase the risk of overdoses, including among children and seniors".

However, Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler, called the Guild's claims 'grossly irresponsible'. While the Guild asserted there are already shortages for up to 40 per cent of the 325 eligible medicines, Butler said only seven were experiencing supply shortages, not because of the dispensing period but through the global pharmaceutical supply chain. He labelled the Guild’s strategy: "The latest scare campaign from the pharmacy lobby group about the government’s cheaper medicine policy", and later said: "Not only is it self-serving and cynical, it's also complete rubbish".

Similarly, Dr Nicole Higgins, President of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, described the Guild’s approach as ‘fear mongering, akin to daylight savings, and saying that our curtains will fade because there’ll be more sunlight – it’s a complete furphy.’

At the political level, a delegation of 80 community pharmacists and industry representatives – wearing their professional white coats for maximum visibility – descended on Canberra to lobby politicians. The Guild itself calls it 'white-coat advocacy'. But a last-minute attempt by the Parliamentary Opposition to block the change in the Senate just weeks before implementation was voted down, and the change was scheduled to commence as planned. Cross-bench MP Jacqui Lambie accused the Guild of over-reach. "I’m beginning to worry," she said, "Whether this is more of a scare campaign now and actually putting their hand out for more money."

With this political rebuff, the question has to be asked whether the Pharmacy Guild’s issue management strategy ever had any realistic chance of success (other than to impress its members and maybe squeeze out additional taxpayer-funded dollars). Moreover, whether a political scare campaign makes sense for any industry, let alone one where so much of its revenue is provided and heavily protected by the government.

As columnist Myriam Robin concluded in the Australian Financial Review: "Forget the overwrought scaremongering about medicine shortages and rising hospital admissions; this is a fight more commercial than medical."