Dozens of people have told the ABC they have received robocalls and text messages from the Pharmacy Guild of Australia in recent days warning they are at risk of prescription medicine shortages "due to the Albanese Labor government".
The calls, flyers and campaign posters in pharmacies appear to be an escalation in the Pharmacy Guild's campaign against the federal government's planned shake-up of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS).
Last month Health Minister Mark Butler said the government would double the amount of medicine some people could collect with each script.
This would effectively halve the cost of hundreds of medicines for chronic conditions, because from September patients would be able to buy two months' worth of medicine for the same price as a one-month prescription.
The Pharmacy Guild previously said the changes would cause a supply shortage of medicines and send some community pharmacies broke.
'Anxiety and mayhem'
Debbie Dodd was with her 95-year-old mother when she received a robocall from the Pharmacy Guild on Sunday.
She thinks the calls are "inappropriate".
"It caused her quite a lot of distress," Mrs Dodd told ABC Radio Melbourne Mornings.
"She's a little hard of hearing, so all she heard was that it was her pharmacy ringing and that she wouldn't have enough medication."
Melbourne resident Linda O'Brien was "very disappointed" when she received a call from the guild warning of medicine shortages over the weekend.
"I think governments are doing their best because we have a world shortage [of prescription medicines]," she said.
"I don't think this change is going to make it worse.
"It's ridiculous to blame the government."
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia and its Victorian branch were contacted for comment.
The immediate past-president of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Karen Price, said it was the "method, not message" of the guild's campaign that was problematic.
"I think patients are finding this highly politicised and polarising kind of language very difficult to manage in the context of their own health care," she said.
"These changes are very complicated.
"We know the detail is not fully through yet, so creating anxiety and mayhem in often very vulnerable patients just seems a little bit of a poor method in terms of creating change."
