Distributors in Ukraine have stopped ordering medicines from the list of 21 international nonproprietary names (INN) to be reimbursed from April 1, 2017. The pharmaceutical market players are waiting for explanations and official information.
"We know well that today distributors do not order medicines from the approved list [21 INN] from manufacturers. This means that after February 1, 2017 only medicines manufacturers of which will be able to cut the prices as it was planned will be left in pharmacies," European Business Association (EBA) Health Care Committee Executive Director Natalia Serhienko said.
Commenting on the government resolution on regulation of prices of medicines and reimbursement to Interfax-Ukraine she said that for some reason the government is confident that manufacturers, and most of them are global pharmaceutical companies operating in many countries, would have to 'tune' their prices of the relevant medicines to regulation in Ukraine.
"Those of them [manufacturers], who would not be able to do this due to unbiased reasons, would have to stop supplies of medicines to the Ukrainian market. Representatives of the Health Ministry are not concerned about this fact, unfortunately," Serhienko said.
She said that the decisions made would not result in a decline in prices of medicines, as there is no understanding of the specifics of the operation of the pharmaceutical market and they hurried.
She said that the EBA always backed the idea of introducing the medicine reimbursement system in Ukraine.
"It is not enough 'to have desire' and provide some funds to introduce the system. One should understand how reimbursement models in other countries work and how not to bring the situation to absurd. Now we start seeing this situation," she said.
Serhienko said that there is no adequate information about the functioning of the system introduced by authorities for the key market players – manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies. Availability of medicines for patients depends on their well-coordinated work.
"At the end of the year when the situation was tense and pharmacies did not know what the ultimate price could apply to the relevant medicines, in the last hours of December 31, 2016 an amendment was made to one of the resolutions [No. 862] permitting sales of ending stocks of medicines at old prices until February 1, 2017 to continue working under Ukrainian law," she said.
Serhienko said that the registers of prices and any official explanation from the Health Ministry on many issues are absent today.
She expressed fears that the forced switch to cheaper medicines by patients would worsen health of most of them.
"One should not ignore the fact that there are notions as "benefit-risk profile" and "bioequivalence" of medicines. We hope that understanding that deprival of citizens of a right to freely select that is far from the European approach would come earlier than the range of medicines in Ukrainian pharmacies would bring medicine back to the times of the Soviet Union," she said.
The Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (AIPM Ukraine) also believe that legal acts introducing reimbursement of the cost of medicines and amendments to the public regulation of prices of medicines are the most important legal acts in the pharmaceutical sphere that will take effect in 2017.
AIPM Ukraine also said that there are no explanation and information about the functioning of the system.
"At present it is unclear how legal amendments would touch the pharmaceutical market. The problematic issues of introducing reimbursement and reference pricing – using the INN list, the small volume of financing of the reimbursement program and the unclear situation with regulation of the free market – could potentially create problems for all market participants: importers, manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies and patients," the association said.
