[Question] Canada — has anyone got a straight answer on EMA
Trying to get a straight answer on this: Canada — has anyone got a straight answer on EMA.
How to compare prices across borders without misleading yourself.
Normalise the pack size first. Presentations differ between member states and a headline figure for one pack is not comparable to another. Then separate reimbursed from private prices, which are set by entirely different mechanisms. Then note the dispensing fee structure, which is nationally regulated.
When members here have done all three, the interesting finding has consistently been that variation between pharmacies within a country is often as large as the variation between countries — which makes the cross-border shopping most of these threads are really about far less attractive than it looks.
The structure that makes this board make sense, once.
Marketing authorisation for these products is granted centrally, which is why the same product exists across the union. Everything after that — whether it is reimbursed, on what criteria, at what price, in what pack size, dispensed under what margin rules — is decided nationally.
So "is it covered" has twenty-seven answers, "what does it cost" has twenty-seven answers plus within-country variation, and only "is it authorised" has one. Almost every argument on this board is two people answering different questions from different countries, both correctly.
Asked in my own language at a local pharmacy and got a clearer answer in five minutes than a fortnight of forum reading.
Would rather be corrected in public than confident in private.
best — the order this archive was captured in
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.
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.
A supply notice in one member state made the front page here and had no effect at all where I am.
Reimbursed or private?
I would not treat one pharmacy’s quote as a national price. The variation within a country is often larger than between them.
the same product has different names and pack sizes across the union
I would not treat one pharmacy’s quote as a national price.
Agreed — and normalising pack size before comparing prices is the fix for half these threads.
Kept the prescription and the receipt for a claim, purely because a thread here told me to. Both were requested.