The Pharmacists Union opposes the government’s decision to reduce the profit margin, and warned of protests by even closing
pharmacies for one day.
“This will bring lower profits for pharmacists. The margin has been decided without a proper study. They haven’t studied the situation in which pharmacists are today, the debt level and the work management. Reducing the margin would bring chaos and more abuses. A pharmacist will not treat patients as human beings anymore, but only as profit sources”, declared Denisa Vrapi, representative of the Pharmacists Union.
The Deputy Health Minister, Milva Ikonomi, explained that this decision was taken for regulating the pharmaceutical market, which is related with the regular supply, the increased quality of medicine and reduced price of medicaments for patients up to 20%.
“The profit margin for 2013 for importers was 10%. In 2014 it turned 8%. It has been reduced with 20%. For distribution, the profit margin was 4%. It turns 3%. It reduced with 25%. The margin for pharmacists is 29%. It turns 25%. It has been reduced with 13.8%. So, pharmacies are the least affected. We must keep in consideration that we made this movement in the negotiation of the medicament price by reducing VAT with 6%. VAT removal is 10%. The medicament price will decrease with 19.4%”, Ikonomi declared.
The Deputy Minister explains that indicators such as business operators will also profit from the new tax package with the VAT removal. They also benefit from the reduced tax on profit, the reduced contribution of health insurance, and from the fact that 50% of their activity belongs to the trading of reimbursed medicaments, which have low existing margins.
“Our pharmacies sell two main types of products. The first main product are medicmanets, and the second main product are clinical materials. They have a different structure in the pharmacy turnover. The clinical materials are 22-25%, while medicaments are divided into two main columns. Medicaments that come from the reimbursed list, and medicaments that come from the free trade. This government decision affects only free trade medicaments. Medicaments that come from the reimbursed list keep the same commercial margin as before”, Ikonomi declared.
The fund that will be saved from the profit margin of medicaments for hospital usage will turn into a bigger quantity of medicaments for continuous supply of hospitals.
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