Waste of medication

Waste of medication / Health News

Remedies Report recognizes further savings potential in spending

09/12/2013

The Federal Government had already made efforts in the past to develop savings opportunities in pharmaceutical expenditure. According to the experts could be saved after the evaluation of the last report even more billions.

The published drug prescription report puts the savings potential at a total of 3.7 billion euros. Especially with the patented drugs, Germany is still too expensive compared to other countries, said the two editors Ulrich Schwabe and Dieter Paffrath. The report definitely confirms the measures taken to reduce costs in the pharmaceutical sector. For expensive medicines there is a price freeze and in addition the manufacturers have to pay a discount on patented drugs.

For some time, new drugs that are being marketed are being investigated for their added value. The determined degree of this added benefit ultimately determines the price. Thus, the competent Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) has so far underwent 48 new active substances for such a benefit assessment. In most cases, the cash registers can then negotiate the prices with the manufacturers. This procedure has so far saved 120 million euros. The declared savings target of two billion euros, but is not nearly achieved.

Considering that the higher manufacturer rebate and the price freeze are only valid until the end of the year, the results so far are even more critical. Patent-protected drugs are simply too expensive. Alone in the so-called analog preparations his further penetrations of at least 2.5 billion euros possible, said Paffrath.

Characteristic of analogue preparations is that they differ only minimally from already introduced preparations. The fact that the common medicines from the existing market are now being tested for their additional benefit was also positively assessed. The G-BA is investigating a number of active substances in this context. Overall, the health insurance expenditures of the statutory health insurance increased last year to 30.6 billion, which corresponds to an increase of 2.6 percent, according to the report. In 2011, spending on medicines dropped for the first time in years.

According to Uwe Deh, head of the AOK Federal Association, 2013 will see an increase in pharmaceutical and vaccine expenditure similar to the previous year. The Scientific Institute of the AOK (WidO) comes even in their forecast for 2014 on a significant increase. Deh therefore demanded that the expiring manufacturer's rebate of 16 percent and the price freeze on certain medicines be extended by another two years.

For the first report issued in 1985, a total of 716 million cash register receipts were evaluated by more than 143,000 contract physicians. What is new is that the prescriptions of around 60,500 dentists have also been included in the evaluation. (Fr)

Picture: Andreas Hermsdorf