Who's not paying their fair share?

Niallers said:
Means test everything. This is the fairest way.
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That's a very expensive way of doing things. Don't give hand-outs to rich old people, remove the public sector pension levy and reduce pay by the same amount instead, thus reducing pensions, and tax all childrens allowance. Then get everyone earning over €10'000 a year into the PAYE tax net. That would be a good start.
 
Of course you're better off going abroad but you'll have lost the saving on the cost of the flights
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If you use the post, you don't have to physically visit the countries.
If you are in the country anyway, it certainly makes sense to get medication while you are there.

With more expensive medication, maybe it would still make financial sense to get a cheap flight!
 
If you order online there is a danger you could end up buying counterfeit medication.
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I suppose if you buy from some random pharmacy, that could happen

However, there are also very reputable pharmacies online.
 
Starting salaries for Pharmacists a few years ago were as high as €70’000 a year. Is this still the case?

In many cases, the cases where the highest cost drugs are being prescribed, the Pharmacist is completely unnecessary. These are the cases where very sick people have their entire healthcare micro-manager by their consultant.

The notion that the pharmacist is a safeguard against the patient taking drugs that have side-effects with other drugs they are taking is also flawed; I can fill a prescription in any pharmacist in the country. There’s little chance that a pharmacist will know most patient histories that well.

Pharmacists are yet another group of self-important people who have enjoyed super normal profits for years due to restrictive entry to their sector. The points that were/are required to study it in university are indicative of this; people wanted to do it because they knew it was a very well paid job, not because it was exciting or rewarding (no 6 year old lies awake at night dreaming of being a pharmacist).
Don’t get me wrong; doctors are worse, with even more self-important assumptions of entitlement, for example many GP’s still think that they should get paid €500 to €600 a day for 4-6 hours work and get their knickers in a twist about the HSE cutting their payments for medical card patients by a few percent. There’s two groups that are still not paying their fair share; pharmacists and doctors, add them to well off pensioners.
 

I actually think that more important than restricting the amount of pharmacist that qualify is the restriction and financial hurdle oput in place on pharmacy businesses. I think wages and profits should always be as high a level as attracts most competition.

@hauliesleap, as you are a professional in the medication business, maybe you could confirm to us how difficult it would be for you open your own pharmacy, from a licence and cost of licence point of view alone, i.e. dealing with government. Your post already hinted at the restrictions that are placed on where a pharmacist can source medication. This does mean that your boss cannot buy the same drugs cheaper in another country, isn't it?

All these things are forms of government intervention "for the public good", which result in higher costs to the consumer. I really do not care how much someone in the private sector is paid or how high their profits are. If it were so easy to make such huge profits then a lot more entrepreneurs would be attracted. So either it is an extremely difficult business to be in, or something is standing in the way of allowing more competition.
 
umop3p!sdn said:
I suppose if you buy from some random pharmacy, that could happen

However, there are also very reputable pharmacies online.
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You can check the bona fides of any online pharmacy. I use a place in the UK, not for prescription meds, but simply for cheaper bits and pieces (things like heat patches) - before I ever used them I checked out who the website was really registered to, and also the company registration info of the pharmacy itself.

The savings are definitely there to be made - presctiption meds or not.
 

Medication is licensed by the Irish Medicines Board. This is an utterly unnecessary function of a body of questionable necessity. All medications will first be licensed by the EU and the IMB will then rubber stamp their approval for the Irish market. Sometimes they restrict or change the labelling but it’s all pretty superficial and acts as a barrier to the European single market. Without their active cooperation with the pharmaceutical companies we could all source our medicines from any pharmacy in the EU. Simple legislation requiring that the supplier must ship the goods with packaging in a language that the purchaser specifies is all that is necessary.

We all know that the ability to control supply allows the supplier to earn huge profits (super normal profits). It was true for taxi drivers pre deregulation and it is true for pharmacists and doctors. I agree that price control is not the answer, I am never in favour of price controls, the answer is open access to the market.
 
Your should see the amount of medication that is prescribed by GP for care homes, which is not necessary for patients. A matron of a care home told me that they could not manager without certain drugs for some their patients as they do not have other means of helping the patients and making time for carers to keep the home looking good for visitors and protentional clients, I could go on but I think the post will be deleted by moderator.
 
hauliesleap said:
The days of starting on 70K are history. It is as low as 35K now, going up to circa 45K.
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So the day you walk out of college you might earn as little as €35’000? The good news is that is a fantastic starting salary for anyone.


hauliesleap said:
Too right, "Doctors are worse"

Pharmacy has been hit much harder than doctors!!!
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Pharmacists were paying themselves far more than GP’s and let’s be honest, a doctor is a far more skilled job. Most of what a pharmacist does can be done by reading the MIMS. The ability to count is also necessary.
 
Purple said:
Most of what a pharmacist does can be done by reading the MIMS. The ability to count is also necessary.
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Ive often wondered about this. Why cant I just buy my medications without the middle man? If a doctor says I need 'xyz' so what if a pharmacist gives it to me or a regular person gives it to me? What special knowledge is required to read the prescription and count the correct number of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX? Ive never ever had a pharmacist change what was prescribed. Ive also worked in a pharmacy and could not see what special job the pharmacist was doing by comparison to just an average joe soap looking for the correctly named item on the shelf.
 
I'm related to a pharmacist. They spend most of their time reading an order, taking the order and putting it on a bottle or box, printing a label on it and putting it in a bag. The interactions that drugs may have with other drugs is important but the Doctor, with the aid of a MIMS and the information that they get from the drug companies, can deal with that. While a pharmacist may ask the relevant questions about two drugs that are being prescribed at the same time they are far less likely than the GP that prescribed them to know the full patient medical history and so are less likely to be able to spot a potential problem with existing medication.

Pharmacy has very high points in the leaving cert because of the demand for the course. There is high demand because of the money that pharmacists can earn. I’m not saying it is easy but it’s no harder than many courses that have far lower points requirements. Pharmacists, like so many other “professionals” in this country, think that they, by virtue of their qualification alone, are somehow entitled to a high income.

Doctors very much fall into that group. My sister in law is a GP in the UK. She earns around one third of what a GP here earns.
 

It isn't free to see a GP in the UK, if it was the GP would not get paid (nor would their staff). It is paid for through taxation, i.e. it is a universal welfare payment to all people who visit a GP. Universal payments are a bad idea as those who can afford to pay for it don't. The problem is the amount GP's (and others) expect to earn and do earn.
 

Very important point and one that politicians love to bring up. Just like those public health services here that you do not pay for when you use them, they are not free, we pay for them through taxation. Even a child with no income pays tax when making any purchase that attracts VAT.
All those wonderful "cheap" services like the Libraries? Paid for out of our taxes.
Wonder why there is little or no competition to public transport? Private companies cannot compete with the subsidised public service, paid for out of taxation.
Wonder why UPS don't offer regular postal like service of letters? Cannot be done at the price directly charged by An Post without subsidy from the taxpayer.
Of course these arguments will attract the typical political and socialist response of "if government didn't provide and subsidise these services they wouldn't exist or people couldn't afford them". How then is it that people can afford to buy food from private enterprises, or shoes, or any of the other daily necessities and niceties?
Apologies, rant over.
 
Who's not paying their fair share?
Well when you compare us to the European average for income tax take as a proportion of total income the low to middle paid are not. The "well off", those on around €70'000 a year pay around 75% of the EU average. People on €35'000 pay around 25% of the EU average.
So, the old and the poor, that's who we need to hit first
 
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