Yeah, it is just in Ontario. And it’s not “rollbacks”; it’s a payola scam, just like the original Payola scam back in the 1950s.
***Rant Alert***
I get the generic versions of all my prescriptions, because I’m on the Ontario Government’s Trillium Drug Plan (otherwise known as the Ontario Drug Benefit Plan). I’m on the Trillium Plan, because it’s the only way I can afford my medications. If I wanted the branded versions, I’d have to pay the difference, which is prohibitive on my income. And there are many, many others (particularly those with mental conditions) in the same situation.
The fact that those on the Trillium Plan have to accept only generic versions of drugs, makes the whole payola scam that’s been going on in big-chain pharmacies for so long, positively egregious. That payola scam has the big drugstore chains requiring generic drug companies to pay them to carry the generic drugs. The drug companies had to cover the cost of those corporate bribes, so they passed them along to consumers (and the Trillium Plan, which is paid for with everyone’s tax dollars) in the form of higher costs. So a drug that costs around 25 cents a pill in other countries, costs around 90 cents a pill here. The scam has been going on for many years, so you can imagine the millions of dollars involved.
Now that the Ontario Government is preparing legislation to ban the payola scam, the big-chain pharmacies (and the Pharmacists’ Association) have launched a pissing contest of a campaign, threatening to cut hours and close stores if the government takes away their payola. They’re even leaving automated messages (from “your local pharmacist, Tim Towers”, who is actually on the board of the Rexall family of drugstores, and a high-up in the Pharmacists’ Association) on people’s phones, telling them to call their MPP and say, “Don’t cut local healthcare.” The big drugstores even have posters promoting that, on their doors, their windows, and at the pharmacy counter. I’m so disgusted and outraged by the outright LIES on those posters, that just looking at them makes me want to start picketing the drugstores and telling people the truth about the matter. How DARE those pharmacists lie to us like that??? Clearly, they don’t give a damn about providing healthcare; they just want to keep collecting their bribes.
I must also point out that, not only is their ad campaign total BS, but by using the robocalls, they’re in violation of the CRTC regulation which prohibits the use of automated dial and delivery systems for anything but emergency messages or messages from schools to the parents of their students. Use for any commercial purpose whatsoever (and I’d call trying to keep making obscene amounts of money a pretty commercial purpose), is illegal, and the CRTC can cut off the offender’s phone service on 48 hours’ notice.
I’m so pissed off about the whole thing that I’m boycotting the big drugstore chains. I now get my prescriptions filled at the little independent pharmacy counter in my local supermarket. And I buy my toiletries anywhere but in a big chain drugstore. I’m amazed at how much cheaper things are that way.
***Here Endeth the Rant***
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