“The problem is that there are large delays at the House, the money is gone since April-May, and pharmacies owe medication distributors. There are many cases of pharmacies which have been sued by distributors, the pharmacy lasts as long as the medication distributor can deliver the products to it and can wait for it to pay. The problem is also of the distributor, how long it lasts,” the Secretary General of the Romanian Pharmacists College, Ioan Uivarosi, told Business Standard.
According to the contract with the National House of Health Insurance, the payment of compensated and free-of-charge medicines should be made within 90 days, but payment deadlines in medicine retail and distribution are traditionally double that period and even longer on the local market, unlike on any other European market.
“The pharmacy is not alone in this game, it is tied to medicine distributors and suppliers, everybody is in the same boat. Now, because prices have kept dropping and margins have kept declining, distributors must be able to support these margins,” Uivarosi added.
The Romanian medicine market, valued at €1.8 billion by the Cegedim study and market research company, is mainly made up of products which are released based on medical prescription.
