[PSA] EU is not what most of this community thinks it is
EU is not what most of this community thinks it is, written plainly and without the jargon that usually swallows this topic.
Pharmacy margins and dispensing fees are regulated nationally, which explains price differences that otherwise look arbitrary.
Marketing authorisation is granted centrally for these products; reimbursement, pricing and prescribing criteria are national competences. Those are decided by different bodies with different processes.
Cross-border prescription recognition exists under EU rules but is conditional and narrower than commonly assumed, with requirements about the prescription’s form and content.
Sceptical readings welcome. The confident ones are the ones I distrust.
best — the order this archive was captured in
Nothing here is medical or legal advice, and eligibility questions have national answers that a pharmacist where you live can give you in minutes.
That shortage notice was national and does not apply where the question is coming from.
Right, and a shortage notice in one country tells you very little about the next one along.
Careful, that guidance is from a different country and this thread is asking about somewhere else entirely.
Pack sizes and presentations differ between member states, so a headline price is not comparable until it is normalised to a common quantity.
Left up. It names the member state and the pack size, which is all we ask of a pricing post.
pharmacy margins are regulated differently in each country
What pack size is that price for?
I would not treat one pharmacy’s quote as a national price. The variation within a country is often larger than between them.
Compared prices across two neighbouring countries and found the difference was mostly pack size once I normalised it.
Published reimbursement criteria exist in most member states and are usually available in the national language. They are the authoritative answer to eligibility questions that this board can only guess at.
Supply notices are issued nationally. A notice in one member state does not imply availability problems in another, even for the same product.
reimbursement is national, not European, and that is the whole board
Agreed that pharmacy margin regulation explains a lot of the price differences people find mysterious.
ask for the Beipackzettel or the local equivalent, it answers most questions
Correction: that is the authorisation position, and the question was about reimbursement. Different bodies, different answers.
EU-wide advice is almost always wrong somewhere
What does the local patient information leaflet say?
the same product has different names and pack sizes across the union
- 1Published reimbursement criteria exist in most member states and are usually…6 comments in this branch · started by u/erez_yilmaz