German pharmacists contest health reform

German pharmacists are completely at odds with the current draft health service reform plans of Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government. Heinz-Guenter Wolf, president of the pharmacy federation, the ABDA, has now said that, unless changes are made to the plan, there will be no reform worth the name. He also says the legislation could be too early because the impact of the law to achieve economies in the drugs sector (ASG) introduced in the spring has still to work through the system and is currently operating better than had been expected. Mr Wolf says the government should move back to the 2004 position which was to allow pharmacists to advise patients on drugs and medicines on an independent basis and to continue to provide them with a drug-price-neutral payment. He denied that this would amount to a basic salary and added that, with a price-neutral payment system, competition on quality would still operate between pharmacies. There was also competition anyway in the non-prescription segment of the market. He also said that pharmacies had problems with the drug discount regime.

The government wanted to cut the amount that pharmacies received from health funds in raw annual profits - a total of some 3.8 billion euros ($5.02 billion) - by about 1.0 billion euros. Pharmacies would be penalized to the tune of 500.0 million euros if health funds and drug companies could not agree to save such an amount when negotiating discounts. Mr Wolf says this would be a deal achieved at the expense of third parties and would jeopardize the existence of some pharmacies, especially those relying almost exclusively on prescription-only drugs.

The ABDA maintains that competition in the market is currently only to be found in the non-prescription sector. The price for all other drugs is fixed as a percentage of the wholesale price. For each pack sold on prescription, the pharmacist also receives a fixed 8.10 euros - a so-called price-neutral payment.