..to be followed at some point in the future by a public discussion about health, exercise, training, pre-school, primary, secondary, tertiary and post school adult education programs enhancing diet, lifestyle, mental acuity and social skills. Yep.

Meanwhile we’ll stick with the stolid but maximum Fun-&-Profit Ayn Rand* Alan Greenspan* Milton Friedman passive consumer-society business of simultaneously screwing environment, culture and PEOPLE particularly the urban disposessed everywhere

– see our terrific work at Burrup Peninsula carting away artefacts to stick in a shed AND enable the mass production of chemical urea fertiliser that not only dramatically carbonises the atmosphere during its production over a 20-year period BUT IS LETHALLY ECOLOGICALLY TOXIC TO ALL LIFE FORMS ON THE GROUND IT’S JUST THAT YOU CAN’T SEE IT WITH YOUR EYES SO LIKE THE COMPLETE MUSK-SCIENCE SOLOPSIST-OBJECTIVIST SUCKER YOU MAY BE YOU PROBABLY RECKON IT’S EXCELLENT YEH? –

to functional economy and civil society as well as on behalf of the gangsterism envisaged in Rand’s scatterbrained “The Citadel.”

**founders, along with a pop-psychologist called Nathaniel Branden, of The Objecivists, Manhattan, 1950s

14m ago10.00 AEST

Reporter:

Can you guarantee no person will go without medicine because of this plan and can you guarantee no pharmacy will have to close because of this plan?

Butler:

This will not impact the supply and demand of these 300 medicines over a period of time. We have deliberately decided to phase in these arrangements over the course of this year and next year so pharmacists are able to change their itinerary arrangements.

It is important to stress that not every patient on these medicines is going to rock up to their pharmacy with a new 60 day script at the same time. Patients will come off their existing scripts at different times.

They will have to consult with their GPs about whether they qualify for the 60 day dispensing arrangements and there are strong arrangements we have in place, we pay wholesalers to have in place to ensure every pharmacist can have supply delivered to them within 24 hours.

I caution people against taking advice from the pharmacy lobby group about supply arrangements that are monitored very closely by our medicines authorities.

Reporter:

The Pharmacy Guild is saying of the 300 medicines that are part of the changes, about 40% have shortages at the moment, and it is all well and good to double the amount of prescriptions for patients but double of nothing is still nothing. What is being done to ensure that these medicines that are part of the changes have adequate supplies and also particularly for regional and rural pharmacies where their supplies might not be as much as the city counterparts?

Taking questions, Butler is pushing back against the pharmacy lobby’s “scare campaign” that this policy could worsen medicine shortages.

Butler:

Firstly, I advise people to take advice around medicine supply and shortages from our medicines authorities rather than the pharmacy lobby group. The actual truth is of the 325 medicines that I have announced today, only 7 of them are experiencing supply shortages. Shortages which are reflected across the world and are a product of the impact of Covid supply lines.

…This is not going to change the number of tablets dispensed in a given period of time. It is simply going to mean that people can get two boxes at a time, instead of having to get one box and come back twice as often. We have very strong arrangements for supply from wholesalers in this country, wholesalers are funded by taxpayers to ensure that any pharmacist that is dealing with supply shortages will have that supply delivered within 24 hours anywhere in this country, whether you are a pharmacy in the city or a pharmacy in regional and rural Australia.

I would caution against some of the scare campaigns being put by the pharmacy lobby group.

John Blundell independent economics South Australia with thanks as ever to our thoughtful readers..