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Second Danish drug-maker quits Greece over price cut The heavily indebted Greek government has cut the prices of medicines by 25pc. However, Leo Pharma has suspended the sale of two of its drugs because it claims that the price reductions will lead to job losses in Europe. Kristian Hart Hansen, a senior director of the company, said the 25pc price reduction would encourage similar moves in other countries with large debt problems such as Ireland and Italy, according to the BBC. Last week another Danish company, Novo Nordisk, withdrew sales of one of its products from Greece for the same reason. According to the BBC, Stefanos Combinos, the director general of Greece’s economy ministry, said that Greece was one of the three most expensive countries in Europe for medicines. He also said that pharmaceutical companies had an obligation to accept price reductions. Leo Pharma claims it is owed millions of euros in unpaid bills by Greece. Greece is facing financial crisis. At the start of this month, eurozone members and the IMF agreed a €110bn (£95bn) three-year bail-out package to rescue the country’s economy. In return for the loans, Greece has started to make wide-ranging, deep and painful austerity cuts. Mr Combinos told the BBC that Greece had been under pressure from the IMF to make severe cuts and anticipated that a compromise on a price reduction could be reached soon. |
Ayn Rand est plus forte que Nostradamus.
N’empêche, c’est terrible. Enfin, surtout s’il s’agit de médicaments importants pour guérir ou atténuer les effets de certaines maladies.
J’espère que ces (ir)responsables seront justement punis. (Je parle évidemment de ceux qui ont si mal administré l’Etat grec et de ceux qui ont voté pour eux en toute connaissance de cause.)
Sur le coup, j’ai à peine allumé quand je te l’ai tweeté mais là je me dis que ça doit bien se produire dans tous les endroits où le prix des médicaments est réglementé.
Par exemple, en Allemagne, les prescriptions sont « gratuites » (couvertes par l’assurance-maladie publique)… qu’est-ce qui dit que les médecins ne se font pas dire de pas prescrire des trucs trop chers?