Healthy Skepticism Library item: 18932

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Publication type: news

Consumers question GMiA
Pharmacy Daily 2010 Oct 8

Full text:

THE Consumers Health Forum (CHF) has joined the chorus of voices
currently questioning the Generic Medicines Industry Association’s
(GMiA) stance against the ACCC’s proposed condition C2 on its draft Code
of Conduct, which would require its member companies to report every six
months on the value of all benefits, such as hospitality, entertainment
and gifts provided to pharmacists.

In backing up its stance against the condition GMiA told the ACCC that
it did not believe that the “trivial and non-existent” public benefit
would outweigh the “significant compliance costs” that generating the
six-monthly reportage would entail.

In response to this submission the CHF said that it did not consider
GMiA had provided compelling enough arguments against the imposition of
condition C2.

The CHF then used the wording by GMiA in its ACCC rebuttal to support
its own pro-C2 argument, saying that the statement: “GMiA believes that
pharmacists do not recommend a particular generic medicine to a patient
solely because of the provision of an educational event or other non-
price benefits…”, is not sufficient to warrant scrapping the condition
because it is an argument based on a “belief” not hard evidence.

Moreover GMiA’s assertion that the public will not get an accurate
picture of all the reasons why a certain generic is recommended by a
pharmacist if companies have to detail their pharmacist gifting
practices, was also brought in to question, with the CHF saying that
“pharmacists should be willing to discuss with consumers why they chose
generic substitution is appropriate, and to explain the factors that led
to that decision”.

In addition, the CHF also said that “an unwillingness on behalf of the
industry to report non-price benefits may create a perception of a lack
of transparency, between pharmacists and the generic medicines industry,
potentially causing a loss of confidence and trust”.

In its submission to the ACCC the CHF also said that GMiA’s assertion
that reportage would be of limited value to consumers was sketchy as it
knowledge GMiA has not consulted with consumers to ascertain their views
on the value of “CHF’s position is that consumers will benefit from
increased transparency in the relationship between the generic medicines
industry and pharmacists,” it said in its statement.

In closing the CHF questioned the GMiA’s argument that “the current
level of non-price benefits as a proportion of total benefits provided
to pharmacy by each member of GMiA is less than 1%”.

The CHF said that as no information was provided as to how the figure
was reached, it would be “interested” to know the basis for the
calculation “particularly given the difficulties outlined in GMiA’s 8
September 2010 submission in relation to collecting information about
non-price benefits and placing a financial value on these benefits”.

The CHF also questioned whether the administrative and compliance costs
would be as “significant” as argued by GMiA.