More bad news for the holders of the agreed pharmaceutical expenditure. Which would not only confirm the decrease already recorded in June by Federfarma (-6.3%) but would actually increase it by two points, going down to 8% nationally and even 10% in some regions. The conditional is a must because at the moment we are only thinking about projections, but in Federfarma there is still a certain concern. Also because from the first analyzes the main cause of the new slowdown could be traced back to the recent genericization of some active ingredients with high consumption. While waiting for the official data, the employers' union nevertheless confirms the recipe that sees the reform of remuneration as the only way out of the negative spiral of public spending. Last Tuesday's general assembly reiterated this, which in the programmatic "manifesto" delivered to the executive to deal with the reorganization of the service with the government and the regions also included the opening of that table on mixed pay which has so far remained only on the paper of the maneuver from a year ago. And speaking of data, there is also expectation for the Regions' calculations on the expenditure actually incurred in 2010 for direct distribution. In recent weeks, in fact, Aifa had formalized a deficit of around 100 million euros on last year's territorial spending (i.e. affiliated with pharmacies more direct than the ASL) determined by a deficit on Pht spending of around 210 million. Moreover, the Agency itself had already raised some doubts in August about the reliability of this liability, calculated on the basis of the data sent by the Regions and denied by the reports from the drug traceability database (which would instead indicate a much smaller deficit and in line with the expenditure of previous years). The technicians of the regional governments are now at work re-checking the data and it is clear that general attention is concentrated above all on the expenditure for the former Osp-2, reclassified by Aifa last November in the Pht and therefore the only suspects of the unexpected breakthrough. And even on this chapter, pharmacies should keep their antennas raised. Not due to pay-back risks (the direct deficit is repaid by the Regions out of their own pockets) but due to the logic of the communicating vessels with which local administrations have been governing pharmaceutical spending as a whole for some time now. And so, with hospital expenditure growing dramatically and expenditure for Pht which in 2010 would have "eaten up" all the assets of the agreement (subject to checks) some might be tempted to squeeze further the agreement to reduce the liabilities on the others. Authorizes these hypotheses the document of the Regions in which drastic measures are requested for the containment of the hospital, among which once again the competitions between molecules for single therapeutic classes peep out.
Pharmacist33 – 7 October 2011
