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APMGR: Ministry of Health, Ministry of Finance acting deliberately for disappearance of cheap medicines
The Association of Generic Medicine Producers (APMGR) and the Industrial Medicine Producers' Employer Association of Romania (PRIMER) are accusing the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Public Finance of acting deliberately for the disappearance of cheap medicines from the Romanian market and for the destruction of the local medicine-producing industry, an APMGR release shows.
Adrian Grecu, president of the APMGR, said that he cannot have another explanation for the fact that not even on the occasion of the budget for 2018 the two ministries have taken any measures to protect cheap generic medicines, whose disappearance on the market is confirmed by independent entities.
According to the market research firm CEGEDIM, 60% of the over 2,300 medicines that run the risk to disappear from the market in the following period are medicines with prices below 25 lei, used by more than 8.5 million patients, and most of these manufactured in Romania, the press release said.
The APMGR and the PRIMER believe that imposing the clawback tax on cheap medicines is the main cause for their disappearance.
"We have understood the budgetary constraints that have led to the introduction of this tax, but we cannot agree to its uniform application, given that cheap medicines are not those that increase the state's expenditures," Adrian Grecu said.
"It is not pharmaceutical companies that have allocated for consumption of medicines a budget remained at the 2012 level. It is not them who thought of a clawback tax that is applied uniformly to medicines costing thousands of euros and to the cheap ones and that is leading to the disappearance of the latter from the market," added Grecu.
According to the medicine makers, those supporting a clawback tax applied uniformly in the name of protecting the state budget are only "partisan to the destruction of the Romanian economy".
Dragos Damian, executive director of PRIMER, said he does not ask for favors, but equal treatment. "It is not right to sit at the same table, some of us to eat beans, other black caviar, but the bill to be equally divided," he added.