{"id":798657,"date":"2026-07-14T00:55:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/798657\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T00:55:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:55:13","slug":"should-australia-implement-supermarket-pharmacies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/798657\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Australia implement supermarket pharmacies?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a push this morning for\u00a0Australian supermarkets<\/a> to sell\u00a0prescription medication, but not\u00a0everyone is sold on that idea.<\/p>\n

A report from the Grattan\u00a0Institute<\/a> suggests there is limited competition in\u00a0the pharmacy sector and making\u00a0these drugs available in supermarkets could be a solution.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dr Nick Coatsworth spoke with Today.\u00a0Today<\/p>\n

But not everyone is sold on the idea, including Today medical expert, Dr Nick Coatsworth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do have some concerns\u00a0about that, these are\u00a0the supermarkets, Coles<\/a> and\u00a0Woolies<\/a> that apparently can\u2019t be\u00a0trusted to price our milk, but can\u00a0be trusted to price our drugs,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u00a0think it\u2019s an idea that\u2019s going to\u00a0be debated over a few days, but it\u00a0really would lead us down a path of\u00a0Americanisation of our system I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

While there is suggestion making prescription medication available in supermarkets could help with availability in regional parts of Australia, Dr Coatsworth said even if that were the case, these supermarket pharmacies would still need to be operated by a qualified pharmacist.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine\u00a0going to your dairy aisle, then\u00a0going to Liquorland and then\u00a0picking up your blood pressure\u00a0tablets… it really is bordering on\u00a0absurdity, particularly when you\u00a0talk about rural pharmacies and\u00a0also the push towards making\u00a0pharmacies hubs of our health care\u00a0for vaccination and chronic disease,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u00a0was down at Yass, near Canberra<\/a>, the\u00a0other day and there\u2019s a Priceline\u00a0across the road from the\u00a0chemist, so I think there is\u00a0competition in the sector and I think\u00a0some of these claims that\u00a0there aren\u2019t are probably a little\u00a0bit overdone. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we should really\u00a0focus on strengthening our\u00a0community pharmacies rather than\u00a0looking to dilute them into\u00a0supermarkets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is a push this morning for\u00a0Australian supermarkets to sell\u00a0prescription medication, but not\u00a0everyone is sold on that idea.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-798657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}