Disappearing pharmacies

[woolybanana]

The Cour des Comptes is suggesting that half the local pharmacies in the country need to close as they dont pay and are making medicines expensive.

At present on average, one closes every two days.

Well, the one I use is doing a roaring trade.

Perhaps they need Boots?

[andyh4]

Our two pharmacies have amalgamated into one - perhaps no bad thing since we now have a 6 day service no matter which we historically used with a 4 1/2 day service. AS far as I can see everyone is happy. No loss of jobs, bigger premises,

TBH 2 pharmacies for a commune of 4k inhabitants - perhaps doubled if every outlying commune and hamlet were added - seemed at bit OTT

Perhaps it is this rationalisation that is taking place.

As to making medicines expensive, I am not sure I follow. My Ameli statement shows the cost of the medicine, a payment to the pharmacy, a payment from CPAM and the rest to be covered or not from the mutuelle.

If there were fewer pharmacies, where would the reduction in cost come from? Reduced payment to the pharmacy itself is the only way I can see - but they still have staff, taxes and cotisations to pay. I have yet to walk into any pharmacy without a queue - so they are not over staffed. And not a lot they can do about taxes and cotisations.

[Lehaut]

Our pharmacie in Ducey, serves a local population of about 3000. There is another one 100 meters up the same street. Our chap worked in London for a while so he likes to chat to us in English. He has just bought the other pharmacie. He will run the one up the street while his wife runs the other one, swapping over on Saturdays. No shortage of business there.

Without doubt, if the government deregulated the sale of pharmacutical products here in France, it would be a different story. You only have to look at the price of Ibruprofen and paracetamol in Tescos to see what the real price of some medcines is.

[CeeJay]

Certainly not disappearing in my neck of the woods.

Small town of 4000 and has 3 very regularly and very busily used pharmacies.

Who said the French are hypochondriacs!!

[YCCMB]

We just have the one: it's brand new and purpose-built so that the previous pharmacy could be vacated and sit empty and for sale. The new one is about twice the size of out local Co-Op, a nod to the relative importance of medication vs food, I guess.

I've never set foot inside it, but the car park is almost always full. There are only 1500 people in our village, but most seem to visit daily.

[Gardengirl]

We now have 3 pharmacies, serving a town of around 10,000, with several villages of varying sizes nearby whose inhabitants use the twn pharmacies.

We had 4 pharmacies until a few months ago, when one moved to the local commercial centre which has grown rapidly.

An optician has also moved down there, leaving plenty of others in town, plus there’s one of the newish breed of cheap specs shops there - I’ve not yet seen anyone go into the cheap specs shop when I’ve been going in and out of the next door bio shop.

[NormanH]

I can't count how many we have in Béziers, but what is clear is the magnificent work that is done by the one I use in a 'difficult' multi-racial, multilingual depressed city-centre.

It is effectively a port of first call for many people and certainly relieves the pressure on the medical centre.

They survey the 'cocktail' of medicines that I have to take (and on a couple of occasions have picked up a prescription  for something I shouldn't have been given); they will give me the flu vaccination; they give informed advice (people are less scared of them than of the Doctors so I have seen them help a North African lady understand the results of her blood test) and they take infinite pains to make sure that patients with a poor understanding of French know exactly how and when to take the medicines they have been prescribed.

In short they provide a splendid service (an area in which France is said to be weak) that  is nothing to do with a counter shop assistant in a chain shop.

No doubt they will die out as the mania for profit over humanity wins.

Seeing  the price of things but not their  value is creeping in here too under Macron

[Patf]

The 2 main pharmacies in central Mirande combined a few years ago.

Someone said at the time that the govt. was reducing the number of medicaments for which the pharmacies take a 'fee' from CPAM etc. So their income had dropped.

I don't know if that's true.

[Judith]

2 phamacies in our smallish town of c2000, much larger in the summer ... the one I use  mainly seems to be well used, not sure about the other, but I would have thought it was prospering too.  Most of the larger villages around have one, the smaller ones will use ours.  I have no learnt not to go on market day unless I must!