Another Greek Crisis: A Drug Shortage
Reimbursement fraud costs Greece €500 million a year
This article is for subscribers only.
In crisis-wracked Greece, even finding aspirin can be a pain. The Panhellenic Association of Pharmacists says Greece is running short of almost half its 500 most-used drugs.
The Greek government sets drug prices, and public insurers cover most of the bills submitted by the manufacturers and the wholesalers that supply hospitals and drugstores. The economic crisis made cost-cutting an imperative. Over the last year and a half, the government has cut drug prices, in some cases by up to 25 percent. The aim was to trim a national health bill that totaled more than €13 billion ($17 billion) in 2010, or about 5 percent of GDP.