By next Thursday, the date of publication of the Official Gazette, the Companies will have mostly adjusted their prices to the public to the reference one, thus ending all difficulties for citizens. This was communicated in a note by AIFA which hopes, in this way, to quickly eliminate the inconvenience for citizens linked to the delays in aligning the prices of generic drugs with the established reference price. «As announced» underlined the General Director of the Italian Medicines Agency Guido Rasi (photo) «AIFA has followed with great attention and concern the evolution of the situation which came to be determined with the application of the decree law 78 of 31 May 2010 (converted into Law 122 of 30 July 2010), which peremptorily requested the alignment of the prices of generics with the average European prices. The possible difficulties will largely be resolved by next Thursday, also thanks to the sense of responsibility shown by the companies and therefore, while expressing great appreciation for the goodwill of the Regions, we believe that there is no need for further interventions". "Pharmaceutical companies will do everything possible to lower the prices of medicines to the reference prices established by AIFA, but with these prices it is difficult to move forward and therefore we ask citizens' understanding in advance for those medicines on which it will not be possible to intervene" is the comment of the president of Farmindustria, Sergio Dompé. "At the moment it is difficult to make a precise estimate of the number of drugs that will be realigned to the reference prices - but I can say that we will do everything possible, even if in the case of companies where the margins are already very low it will not be easy to intervene". For its part, AssoGenerici specifies in a note that «the partial realignment is in progress, but is unable to indicate either the extent or a precise date, because this decision is up to the individual associated companies on the basis of their own income statement. What AssoGenerici can affirm is that the price reduction envisaged by the Aifa resolution, on the basis of last summer's economic manoeuvre, is such as to make it impossible to produce all the medicines affected by the reference price revision, in the current conditions of the Italian market for equivalents characterized by low sales volumes, and that this is the figure we have been dealing with for years".
DoctorNews – April 19, 2011
