BUSINESS NEWS
New Clicks happy with drug fees
Posted Wed, 01 Nov 2006
New Clicks Holdings has welcomed the pharmacy dispensing fee regulations announced by the Health Department on Tuesday. "It is now critical that we have stability in the pharmacy sector which has been operating in an environment of uncertainty for far too long," New Clicks head David Kneale said in a statement. He said the collaborative process followed by the department had resulted in a workable and transparent pricing model that provided a fair return to pharmacists and benefited customers. The department earlier announced that the new dispensing fee for medicine would come into effect from Wednesday. Where the single exit price (SET) of a medicine was less than R75, the dispensing fee would be R4 plus 33 percent of a single exit price, Director General Thami Mseleku said at Gallagher Estate, Midrand, on Tuesday. Where the SET was R75 or more but less than R250, the dispensing fee would be R25 plus six percent of the SET. In the case of a SET of R250 or more
but less than R1000, the dispensing fee would be R33 plus three percent of the SET. Should the SET be R1000 or more the dispensing fee would be R50 plus 1.5 percent of the SET. The new fees were reached by the Pricing Committee, ordered by the Constitutional Court last year to reconsider a fee of 26 percent of the SET, capped at R26. Managing director Michael Harvey said Clicks supported government's move to make medicine more affordable and accessible to consumers.
Clicks would implement the new dispensing fee structure within the timeframe outlined by the department, Harvey said.
Sapa
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