Greece’s international lenders are again pressing the government to liberalize the market for nonprescription drugs and let supermarket be allowed to start selling medicines and provide competition for pharmacies which enjoy a monopoly, including on selling baby formula which can’t be purchased in stores.
During a meeting between Health Minister Andreas Lykourentzos, the European Commission’s mission chief in Athens, Matthias Mors, and other representatives from both sides, the issue of deregulating nonprescription medicines was raised once again, with Troika officials arguing that the measure would help drive down the price of drugs, currently very high as the profit margins of pharmacists and their wholesalers are factored in, the newspaper Kathimerini reported.
Bringing other types of stores into the market would make the drugs more accessible to cash-strapped Greeks and boost competitiveness, according to the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB.) Ministry officials said if drug stores can’t keep their monopoly that as many as 11,000 of them would close.
Unlike other countries, such as the U.S., consumers can’t even buy aspirin unless they go to a pharmacy, which close at 2:30 p.m. and aren’t open on weekends, although there is rotation system in which a few are open to provide 24-hour access, although it is limited.
During the meeting, officials also discussed the issue of overdue debts of the National Organization for Healthcare Provision (EOPYY) and state hospitals to pharmacists. The debts – totaling 2 billion euros ($2.6 billion) and 1.4 billion euros ($1.8 billion) respectively – will be paid by the end of June, sources told the newspaper, although similar promises have been broken, leading to pharmacists refusing to accept government insurances programs and forcing people to pay out of pocket even though they have money deducted from their paychecks to pay pharmacies when they need medicine.
Lykourentzos has reportedly made an application to the Administrative Reform Ministry, which is overseeing an overhaul of the civil service, to approve the recruitment of doctors and nurses to fill vacancies at state hospitals.
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