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SFEE announcement on the Ministerial Decision Amendments to the “Pricing provisions for medicines” (29/11/2024):

Another distortion in the pharmaceutical market, the effects of which have not been assessed by the State and directly burden patients and pharmaceutical companies

Chalandri, 4 December 2024.- Following the promulgation of the Ministerial Decision on the amendments to the “Pricing provisions for medicines”, concerning the adjustment of the Daily Treatment Cost (DTC) above which repricing takes place, SFEE notes the following:

The surprise increase of 65% in the price limit, where a medicine is exempted from annual repricing, practically means that while until now the price of medicines with a retail price of up to €6 for monthly treatment was not reduced, this will now apply to a retail price of up to €10. This development will create in the near future an increase in pharmaceutical expenditure, an increase in the mandatory refunds that pharmaceutical companies are required to pay, while the reduction in patient copayment for all those medicines with a retail price of €6 to €10 for monthly treatment will not materialize.

Once again, the effort to reduce compulsory returns is cancelled and obligations are transferred from some groups of categories of medicines to others. This is yet another distortion in the pharmaceutical market, the effects of which have not been assessed by the State.

Such practices exacerbate the already suffocating environment of underfunding public spending on medicine and contribute to depriving Greek patients of new, innovative treatments whose launch in the country, under the current conditions, is not sustainable.

Closing 2024, unfortunately ominously, and in view of the new year, SFEE calls for the development of a sustainable, patient-centered national pharmaceutical policy at last, aiming at good public health and the sustainability of the health system and pharmaceutical companies.