The clawback tax will decrease proportionally to the drop in drug prices, said Vasile Ciurchea, the president of Romania’s National Health Insurance House. The drop will probably amount to 5%, he added.

“As long as prices go down, the tax also goes down,” he said, cited by local Economica.net.

The disappearance from the market of certain drugs is an ongoing process, which is balanced by the emergence of new drugs. However, the percentage of the drugs that will disappear will not affect the patients’ treatments, Ciurchea said.

In March, the Generic Drug Manufacturers Association in Romania (APMGR) said that over 1,000 of the most sold generic drugs could disappear from the Romanian market, if the state continues to have hostile public policies to the local pharma industry.

The clawback tax, which is applied undifferentiated, and the obligation to adjust the generic drugs’ price to both the price of innovative products and to the price in the 12 reference states, will lead to a drop in the selling price below production costs, said APMGR representatives.

editor@romania-insider.com