From now on, residents will have to pay 75 cents for a prescription out of their own pocket, and the state will pay another 75 cents for each prescription service to large pharmacies, while the state will pay an additional 1.75 euros to the only pharmacies in populated areas.
At the same time, the model improves access to new innovative medicines – the list of compensable medicines is expanded and the mechanism of price increase is uniform, as a result of which the medicines will cost less. As a result of the introduction of the new model, the costs of the most expensive medicines have been reduced, emphasized the Minister of Health Hosam Abu Meri (JV) and the director of the Department of Pharmacy of the Ministry of Health, Inese Kauper.
There will be no charge for prescriptions written for children under the age of 18. Indigent persons who will be exempted from the paid pharmacist service will also not have to pay for prescriptions.
Along with chronic patients, it will be possible to prescribe medicine for three months’ consumption in one prescription.
On the other hand, if the patient is prescribed medicine for longer consumption and the medicine will be withdrawn from the pharmacy several times, the fee for the pharmacist’s service – 75 cents – will be applied only the first time.
Additional support in the new model is also provided for individual pharmacies, which also perform a social function in the regions – a higher premium is set for them, similar to what is the case for family doctors, in order to promote the availability of services, Kaupere informed.
Abu Meri has justified the introduction of the new drug model by the fact that the prices of medicines in Latvia have been higher than in Lithuania and Estonia until now. According to him, the changes will ensure cheaper prescription drugs, changing the current mark-up model, which has also been pointed out by the Competition Council, the World Health Organization and the World Bank.
The Ministry of Finance has stated that the new mark-up model “envisages abandoning the non-transparent percentage approach in the mark-up mechanism for wholesalers and pharmacies, which can motivate pharmacies to sell more expensive drugs to patients, instead of drugs of equal effectiveness, which are cheaper.”