OBJECTIVES:

A plethora of measures has been implemented for the purpose of public pharmaceutical cost containment during the recent years in Greece. The main objective of this study was to disaggregate the nature of these policy reforms in terms of cost containment and cost reallocation

METHODS:

For the period 2010-May 2017, 319 statutes and regulations (FEK) that concerned directly or indirectly pharmaceutical care were retrieved from the Government Gazette. A content analysis was performed on these documents to identify unique pharmaceutical policy reforms. These measures were classified firstly with reference to their character as cost containment (white area) or rationing (black area) or a mixture of those (grey area), and, secondly, with respect to cost reallocation to the tax-funded National Health System (NHS) or the social security funds or health consumers.

RESULTS: CONCLUSIONS:

Pharmaceutical reforms during the recent years present a clear tendency to reallocate pharmaceutical cost to consumers. Considering the economic challenges the Greek citizens are facing and the already privatised nature of the Greek health system, policies should focus more on improving health system’s efficiency and effectiveness, instead of increasing out-of-pocket payments, which may exacerbate barriers to pharmaceutical access, especially for the more vulnerable groups.