Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, during a meeting of the National Reform Council, ordered Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili to make the registers of benchmark prices for drugs public.

"The president supported the proposal of his advisor Olha Bohomolets and ordered Health Minister Alexander Kvitashvili to open the registers of benchmark prices for drugs and make them public," the presidential press service reported on Thursday.

While speaking about drug prices, Poroshenko said that "price tags in pharmacies remind [me of] price tags in jewelry stores."

"Steps suggested by us for making the procurement of drugs more transparent and registration more simplified have eliminated the major part of bureaucratic and corruption components, which had been unreasonably increasing the drug prices up to 40-50%," he said.

At the meeting on April 16, the National Reform Council considered the proposals of the Ministry of Health on reforming the healthcare system.

Poroshenko said that healthcare reform was one of the top priorities for the country.

"It is difficult to find a sphere, where the situation is so urgently problematic, so neglected and so corrupt. National healthcare system has become our national disaster," Poroshenko said.

"We are missing honest recognition that free medicine is one of the biggest myths of our time used by Ukrainian politicians every year to fool people," Poroshenko said, adding that this myth needs to be dissolved.

"The truth is somebody has to pay for medical services and the state itself cannot handle that. One cannot heal everyone with the state budget. We must introduce an efficient system of reformed medicine," he added.