Ask the Professional: Chewing Gum More Expensive than Monthly Cost of Hypertension Treatment

Vladimir Kovacevic (BETAPHOTO/AMIR HAMZAGIC/MO)

Vladimir Kovacevic, the leader of a fairly new political movement, Ask the Professional, made a suggestion to the Government of Serbia on April 11 to review the existing concept of pricing for medicines, as otherwise it might see the production of certain medicines suspended.

Kovacevic underlined in a written statement that the growing crisis in the state would affect all segments of economy and bring many industries to a close. “The pharmaceutical sector is going through a rough patch right now. The price of medicaments included in the pharmaceutical palette has been the same for more than eight years,” Kovacevic wrote in his proposal.

“For that reason, pharmacists’ sole interest is to sell patients supplements, because their retail prices are set freely, while the sale of a medicine can hardly cover the basic costs, let alone salaries. A pharmacy can wait for months before a refund from the Serbian Health Insurance Fund comes,” Kovacevic said. To illustrate the point, he said that a 30-day therapy with the most popular hypertension medication, amlodipine, was less expensive than the Orbit chewing gum.

Kovacevic cautioned that “the few local drug producers have been losing money on the pharmaceutical palette, most important for the citizens of Serbia.” “A way to protect social policy is to strike a balance between drug producers, their distributors and patients. The balance has been disturbed in Serbia,” Kovacevic has warned, suggesting that the existing methodology of medicines pricing should be changed.