For a serious increase in pharmaceutical expenditure in 2024, and visible results in the first half of the year, said health minister Adonis Georgiadis at the cutting of the pie of the association of pharmaceutical companies of Greece.

The Minister of Health spoke of a large increase in pharmaceutical expenditure from 600 million in 2014 to 1.4 billion in 2024 in terms of pharmaceutical expenditure in hospitals.

As he said, the numbers for 2023 in health are very bad. Speaking about the clawback (refunds) from the pharmaceutical companies, he said that “it is wrong to think that the state does not pay for it”, as he explained indirectly it does and this creates an imbalance.

As he characteristically noted “clawback is a “medicine” that in the right dose has the desired results, but now we have it in an overdose.”

Adonis Georgiadis called on the pharmaceutical companies for a “good faith partnership to start together to fix the clawback”, but, as he said, he is not promising miracles.

He said it is key to pharmaceutical policy, generic drug penetration over 40% as happens in all European countries, while in Greece is still below 30%.

As he admitted, they should enter every year 80 million in pharmaceutical expenditure, so that all innovative medicines continue to reach the country. “We will take tough measures but we will not tolerate situations of the past” said A. Georgiadis adding that clawback works from one point to another in favor of directed prescribing, as “companies are doing everything to increase prescribing and to make a profit to be able to pay for it, while its purpose was to decrease prescribing.”

The health minister concluded by saying that “we cannot abolish clawback, but we will do everything possible to be able to regulate it”.

The goal of pharmaceutical companies is to reduce shortages and for all patients to have access to innovative medicines, emphasized the president of the pharmaceutical companies of Greece SFEE Olympios Papadimitriou, who explained that access to new medicines in Greece “is already six months behind compared to before, which means that the Greek patients receive them with a delay of up to two years”, while he added that some medicines “may never reach Greek patients” due to refunds.