The Pharmaceutical Policy Reforms in Greece during the Economic Crisis, 2010-2015

Abstract

In the decade 2000-2009 Greece had the higher rate of public pharmaceutical expenditures as a percentage out of the total public health expenditure and the bigger per capita consumption of public pharmaceutical expenditure among the EU countries. At the end of this decade, Greek governments confronted with this “paradox” and tried to reduce it unsuccessfully. In order to finance its debt, Greece took a financial package of 110 billion € from Troika of the European Commission (EC), European Central Bank (ECB), and International Monetary Fund (IMF) under strict conditions and adopted austere policies designed by Troika all over the public finance sector in order to reduce its debts. Our aim is to provide an overview of new legislation starting from the first memorandum until the first quarter of 2014 and to record the impact of pharmaceutical reforms in all over the pharmaceutical chain. The legislation of this period had the reduction in public pharmaceutical expenditures as a primary endpoint. The new laws focus on new drug pricing policies, profit control regulations, and demand regulations. The economic targets in order to decrease public pharmaceutical expenditures were achieved but not without cost, all the parts in the pharmaceutical chain were affected, especially the last link the patients.