OBJECTIVES: Between 1994-2006 the budget for pharmaceutical reimbursement of the Hungarian National Health Insurance Fund Administration (OEP), the only health care financing agency in Hungary, showed significant deficit. It means that the actual drug expenditures became much higher at the end of the year as it was originally planned at the beginning of the fiscal year. The aim of the study to analyse the drug budget of the OEP by identifying the pattern of this deficit. METHODS: Data derived from the financial database of the Hungarian National Health Insurance Fund Administration, covering the period 1994-2006. We analysed the planned and the actual drug budget focusing on the deficit. Deficit was calculated as follows: dividing the gap between the planned and the actual budget by the actual budget. RESULTS: In each year between 1994-2006 we found a deficit at the drug budget of the OEP. This deficit varied between 2.8 % (lowest, 1996) and 36.6 % (highest, 2006) of total actual expenditures. We found 4 peaks on the diagram showing the deficit in the following years: 1994 (21.5 %), 1998 (32.1 %), 2002 (36.6 %) and 2006 (30.4 %). In each of these years, both national governmental and local elections were held in Hungary. CONCLUSION: We found deficit in the drug budget of the Hungarian OEP in each year between 1994-2006, however the highest deficit occurred in those years with political elections. Such strong coincidence between political elections and drug budget should be omitted as soon as possible in order to provide a more transparent way of drug reimbursement policy.