Ontario Pharmacists Protest Fee Cut

Below is an article that was posted on CBC.ca yesterday. I posted the article, but more importantly, you should see some of the comments written by mis-informed people of Ontario. Please check them out and leave your opinions....

Ontario pharmacists protest fee cut

The Canadian Press

About 100 pharmacists rallied outside the Ontario legislature Friday to offer an alternative to a plan to eliminate $750 million in professional allowance fees.

The pharmacists presented a petition with 500,000 signatures calling on the government to stop cutting health care by phasing out payments made by generic drug companies to pharmacists.

Ben Shenouda, president of the Independent Pharmacists Association of Ontario, says they could live without the professional allowance fees if they received $260 million a year in direct government funding.

He says that would allow them to support the elimination of the fees and a reduction in price of generic medications.

Shenouda says the pharmacists also want to see the dispensing fee rise from $7 to $11.25 for each prescription, but the province is offering only a $1 increase.

The Liberal government says Ontario pays much higher rates for generic drugs than many other jurisdictions and wants to eliminate the professional allowance fees to lower prescription costs.

COMMENTS

Zeno27 wrote:Posted 2010/05/07
at 12:50 PM ET -These professional allowances seem to be nothing more than a kickback from the drug companies.

TAPT- These PA's are not kickbacks! They are legitimate allowances that have been set in place by the government to help pharmacies pay for services that the government has not been paying us for. I am 100% positive that the government receives "kickbacks" from Big Drug Companies but of course they don't want to tell the Ontario people that part. Where is the transparency? The government is doing a great job making pharmacies look like complete money hungry vultures, when in fact, all we want to do is give the best service possible to our patients and get reimbursed for our time. That sounds fair to me!


Oh_Oh_Canada wrote:Posted 2010/05/07
at 1:02 PM ET- I can't go 2 miles in any direction without driving past a Shoppers Drug Mart. My small neighbourhood has 3 pharmacies. It appears that the market needs to slim down a little.

TAPT- I think you are over exaggerating just a little! Sure, there are a good number of SDM's in Ontario, but over 51% of the pharmacies in Ontario are small independent pharmacies. I go up north to Sudbury a lot and there are 6 SDM's in that whole city (a population of about 158,000) people. There are about 39 pharmacies in TOTAL in this city so i suggest you stop saying there are too many SDM's around since you are clearly over-reacting. SDM is not as popular as you think in rural and smaller towns.

Mectron wrote:Posted 2010/05/07
at 12:54 PM ET- So they want 11$+ to fill a bottle with pills?
They want to keep receiving BRIBE from durgs manufaturers?
Since they are aleady making a profit on the pills... they should be ZERO bribe and NO dispensing frees at all.

TAPT - In a perfect world i am sure this would be an excellent idea! A world where you don't have to pay employees for their work, a place where you don't need to pay rent or a lease, utilities are free, education is free, no taxes! Wow, what a world that would be! Only in that world could you get your medication for free. Pharmacy is a BUSINESS, we are there to make PROFIT just like every other business out there.

toetag wrote:Posted 2010/05/07
at 4:39 PM ET- the petition numbers came from Shoppers employees ramming a pen and petition in front of every elderly person I saw there... they didn't bother asking me to sign.... i would have given them a peace of my mind lol. but they did encourage the senile old woman in front of me to sign..a.nd even offered to post it for them .... such good caring corporate nazis.

TAPT- And you stood at the pharmacy counter for 8 hours to come to this conclusion? You probably saw ONE person sign the petition and you are coming up with conclusions. Pharmacies target the older people to sign the petition because their services are most at risk. Seniors rely heavily on Pharmacists and pharmacy services as opposed to you who are just probably picking up a package of birth control. One day when you are old, you may actually need your pharmacist and they won't be there for you. At that point, you will realize that maybe you should have signed that petition back in 2010 instead of being selfish and only thinking about your own self and not the overall health of others.