Clawback on drug spending to drop for first time in seven years

The Health Ministry is preparing to lower clawback of out-of-hospital pharmaceutical expenditure in Greece for the first time in seven years, following continual successive increases, Health Ministry sources revealed to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA-MPA).

Based on this information, the 2020 clawback is expected to be restricted to 700 million euros instead of a forecast €1 billion, while progress in negotiations on categories of pharmaceuticals on which there is high spending could lead to a greater reduction in 2021.

They said this was made possible by two reforms initiated by Minister Vassilis Kikilias, of which one was to exclude spending on vaccines from the public pharmaceutical spending budget of the National Organization for the Provision of Health Services (EOPYY) for 2020, securing additional funding of €160 million for this purpose, while the second was to exempt generic and off-patent drugs from the 20% clawback to ensure their sustainability.

The Health Ministry has also helped transform clawback into a mechanism that gives incentives for investments, which since 2019 and 2020 can be offset against a part of the clawback.

According to the ministry sources, the main goals for the coming months are to use the financing opportunities created by the “Greece 2.0” Recovery and Resilience Plan to carry out the necessary organizational structural reforms to improve the quality of the services for the public and to better control and monitor spending.

Source: kathimerini.gr