Government to make further changes to drug financing

Business daily Világgazdaság (VG) speculates that government is considering a proposal of pharma experts to make further changes to the financing of drug subsidies. According to the sources of VG, government wants to introduce a base list of drugs, which would contain the cheapest medicine in each category. These drugs would be preferred through using a multiple (less than one) when calculating the subsidy needs. In the same time however, government also plans to accept new generic drugs to the subsidy list if they are at least 50% cheaper than the original version. Currently, this limit is only 30%.

Our view: According to VG the planed changes aims to lower the deficit of the drug subsidy budget through supporting generic substitution. However, measures seemingly favor the cheapest generics more than the branded ones. Although these changes are certainly less significant that the measures of the recently approved drug market act, we are keen to hear the opinion of the Hungarian drug companies on it.