According to the Ministry of Health, changing the system of price calculations will generate budget savings worth €110 million, compared to total expenses of €750 mln. According to Minster of Health Ion Bazac, these funds will be used in the same therapeutic areas in which they are saved, to allow the treatment of patients with serious illnesses.
The price of medications sold in a pharmacy is calculated starting at the CIP [carriage and insurance paid to] price plus the distributor’s and the retailer’s markups. The new methodology states that the CIP price is set in lei, instead of euro. Also, the CIP price of brand medications is set at the level of the lowest price of the same product in the 12 European countries with the lowest prices. Generic drugs [whose patent expired and whose recipe becomes public] will have a CIP price of 65 percent of the brand medication’s price.
The ministry also set markups so as to encourage less expensive products. Previously, distributors were not interested in inexpensive products, because these did not provide substantial markups.
“The result is that there are substantial price cuts for expensive products. On the whole, the impact of the new regulation will be the rise in the consumption of less expensive generic drugs, the increase in medicine volumes, and the market,” said Dragos Dinu, Partner of Link Resources.
