Lanny Wong is shocked at Casey Costello's plans in a Cabinet paper to deregulate pharmacies, allowing big corporates to expand massively & risking the creation of US-style hub-and-spoke 'pill mills'
Grim. Sort of related, is it just me that avoids shopping "Chemist Warehouse" in favour of local owner operated pharmacies? CW seem to spreading like a virus, that I reckon needs isolation.
Mr. Luxon seems to have some sort of affinity for Chemist Warehouse. Re introducing thr $5 charge certainly favours the "Free Prescription" selling point of those places. They were in such a hurry to bring that charge back when they came to power.
I checked Chemist Warehouse on halalkiwi.com a while ago and learned that the owner was a big supporter of Israel and probably the IDF. That's another reason I avoid shopping there, in addition to the one you cite, Robin.
Love to know if they give donations to ACT as well? I support my local chemist as well, sadly with rising prices people are looking at the $ and not thinking about the long term consequences.
Another sneaky, underhand bill, a major change big drop in health standards. Once again, we see this neoliberal Government putting profit before people. When will they learn that it is people who create the profit for these big corporations. Tracy Costello, I wouldn't trust her 'as far as I could kick her' to promote anything that would be for the greater good.
I didn't vote for health corporatisation, profit driven privitisation, the devaluation of medical professionals and Trumpian autocracy. I'm beginning to think Casey Costello is on the payroll?
Costello and NZFirst has a track record of advancing policy that is driven by a lobby that aims to gain and presumably will donate handsomely for it and probably wrote the proposal. I think its called bribery.
The free advice from pharmacists must be protected! I lived in the US for three years and ended up in silent tears in a pharmacy in massive pain, where the pharmacist wouldn’t talk to me directly and I couldn’t get any advice about what were the best over the counter painkillers for my pain. They just seemed so overworked and had no interest in coming over to talk and provide advice.
My only rational explanation for this kind of thing is that members of the coalition know they are almost certain to be turfed out next year so are rapidly trying to push ideological experiments and set them selves up for post parliament careers.
Hokianga has 1 or 2 pharmacies, the others have closed cos there are no pharmacists willing to move up there and open a pharmacy, and/or we don’t have enough pharmacists.
But changing the ownership model can’t happen as patients might get less service.
But now they have to drive like 50-100km to get a prescription. (And hence they don’t, so get sicker and end up in ED or worse)
Seeing so many arguments from incumbents like this. (GPs in northland are a bit of an example of this too).
Rampant corporatisation isn’t going to end well but the status quo is also really really broken. Something has to change but I very much don’t trust Costello
That Casey Costello and David Seymour are Assoc Mins of Health is obviously hopeless for NZ, and reflects a clear intent to let corporates determine policy, not health. Look at this which I discovered in an effort to get NZ advised of truth about vapes. Here are direct quotes, from the online advice by Health New Zealand, entitled ‘Guidance for Health Workers supporting people to stop vaping and using vaping to stop smoking ‘November 2024 Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora
A link to this document: (NZ Vaping Cessation Guidance.pdf )
See page 31 which states Advice to give those switching from tobacco in 5 major bullet points, Please note the fifth ;
“
• Based on evidence from a small number of studies, with the longest follow-up duration being two years (Lindson et al 2024), there is no serious harm from nicotine vaping.”
On page 18 is the following advice for Smokefree Service Providers. “There is currently insufficient evidence for the use of NRT or any medications for the indication of vaping cessation (page 75). Smokefree Service providers cannot issue NRT for vaping cessation (page 50).”
The 5 points omit the risks of vaping, and the last, shown here, as well as the advice on NRT (nicotine replacement therapy such as patches or gum, completely refute respected international clinical consensus and research findings.
The NZ public should have learned by now that this never results in lower prices, yes it does result in lower costs, but all this does is increase the profit margin.
This is exactly the same as the approach that Seymour is doing with ECE, I think this is scary.
NZ is just too small to sustain this model - we end up with a monopoly/duopoly/tri(?)opoly (gentailers), we know it increases profit margins and we are stuck in a situation where there is no competition.
Grim. Sort of related, is it just me that avoids shopping "Chemist Warehouse" in favour of local owner operated pharmacies? CW seem to spreading like a virus, that I reckon needs isolation.
Mr. Luxon seems to have some sort of affinity for Chemist Warehouse. Re introducing thr $5 charge certainly favours the "Free Prescription" selling point of those places. They were in such a hurry to bring that charge back when they came to power.
Yes, and against all the science (surprise) that doing so would lead to worse outcomes
Science?? That word is meaningless to to them.
I checked Chemist Warehouse on halalkiwi.com a while ago and learned that the owner was a big supporter of Israel and probably the IDF. That's another reason I avoid shopping there, in addition to the one you cite, Robin.
I didn't know that, thanks for sharing
Love to know if they give donations to ACT as well? I support my local chemist as well, sadly with rising prices people are looking at the $ and not thinking about the long term consequences.
Casey Costello of tobacco and guns notoriety.Beware. The track record is very much political donation-driven and not in the least bit reassuring!
Another sneaky, underhand bill, a major change big drop in health standards. Once again, we see this neoliberal Government putting profit before people. When will they learn that it is people who create the profit for these big corporations. Tracy Costello, I wouldn't trust her 'as far as I could kick her' to promote anything that would be for the greater good.
Absolutely agree!
That is shocking. Pressure from overseas chains like the pharmacy warehouse? Sounds like making way for corporate profiteering.
If a pharmacy isn't o wned by someone who can lose their right to practice then where are the patient safeguards?
Ohhh, the last few seconds of this interview we... a little more interesting than I think even Bernard expected!
Great Interview Guys! We would of had no idea about this if it wasn't for this interview.
I didn't vote for health corporatisation, profit driven privitisation, the devaluation of medical professionals and Trumpian autocracy. I'm beginning to think Casey Costello is on the payroll?
Costello and NZFirst has a track record of advancing policy that is driven by a lobby that aims to gain and presumably will donate handsomely for it and probably wrote the proposal. I think its called bribery.
👍💯👏
Great interview - Ms Wong is a great spokesperson for her industry.
As someone earlier said, I make a point of swerving the corporate pharmacies (CW etc) in fabour of my local one here in Strathmore Park, Welly.
As for Minister Costello. Urgh. She is entirely driven by lobbyists.
Please make this public. So important to get this information out there and hopefully stop this harmful policy from happening.
The free advice from pharmacists must be protected! I lived in the US for three years and ended up in silent tears in a pharmacy in massive pain, where the pharmacist wouldn’t talk to me directly and I couldn’t get any advice about what were the best over the counter painkillers for my pain. They just seemed so overworked and had no interest in coming over to talk and provide advice.
My only rational explanation for this kind of thing is that members of the coalition know they are almost certain to be turfed out next year so are rapidly trying to push ideological experiments and set them selves up for post parliament careers.
So if I heard right:
Hokianga has 1 or 2 pharmacies, the others have closed cos there are no pharmacists willing to move up there and open a pharmacy, and/or we don’t have enough pharmacists.
But changing the ownership model can’t happen as patients might get less service.
But now they have to drive like 50-100km to get a prescription. (And hence they don’t, so get sicker and end up in ED or worse)
Seeing so many arguments from incumbents like this. (GPs in northland are a bit of an example of this too).
Rampant corporatisation isn’t going to end well but the status quo is also really really broken. Something has to change but I very much don’t trust Costello
That Casey Costello and David Seymour are Assoc Mins of Health is obviously hopeless for NZ, and reflects a clear intent to let corporates determine policy, not health. Look at this which I discovered in an effort to get NZ advised of truth about vapes. Here are direct quotes, from the online advice by Health New Zealand, entitled ‘Guidance for Health Workers supporting people to stop vaping and using vaping to stop smoking ‘November 2024 Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora
A link to this document: (NZ Vaping Cessation Guidance.pdf )
See page 31 which states Advice to give those switching from tobacco in 5 major bullet points, Please note the fifth ;
“
• Based on evidence from a small number of studies, with the longest follow-up duration being two years (Lindson et al 2024), there is no serious harm from nicotine vaping.”
On page 18 is the following advice for Smokefree Service Providers. “There is currently insufficient evidence for the use of NRT or any medications for the indication of vaping cessation (page 75). Smokefree Service providers cannot issue NRT for vaping cessation (page 50).”
The 5 points omit the risks of vaping, and the last, shown here, as well as the advice on NRT (nicotine replacement therapy such as patches or gum, completely refute respected international clinical consensus and research findings.
Casey Costello.
Disney has a way of designing obvious villains.
Matt Stoller at Big https://substack.com/@mattstoller has several stories about how this model works in the US https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/how-cvs-became-a-health-care-tyrant?utm_source=publication-search and more recently how it is being used to roll up independent businesses by fund managers
Corporations lead to monopoly’s and we all know how bad that is. We’ve all seen the duopoly causing high prices.
The NZ public should have learned by now that this never results in lower prices, yes it does result in lower costs, but all this does is increase the profit margin.
This is exactly the same as the approach that Seymour is doing with ECE, I think this is scary.
NZ is just too small to sustain this model - we end up with a monopoly/duopoly/tri(?)opoly (gentailers), we know it increases profit margins and we are stuck in a situation where there is no competition.
National are letting Seymour do this.