Hungarian budget for meds to increase in 2018

The Hungarian Association of Innovative Pharmaceutical Manufacturers (AIPM) has welcomed the fact that the size of the pharmaceutical budget (the price subsidy for medicinal products available in pharmacies) will increase according to the draft budget for 2018.

According to the draft legislation, the size of the pharma budget will be 337.4 billion forints ($1.22 billion), which is 18 billion forints higher than the 2017 plan. 72.4 billion forints of this amount is planned to be paid by pharmaceutical manufacturers, making it a significant contribution to the financing of the supply of medicinal products in line with the practice of previous years. To put this into perspective: in 2016 the entire pharma spending including manufacturers’ payments was 328 billion forints in total, which represents an increase of almost 10 billion forints, and the portion of the pharma budget that is financed from state subsidies will increase as well.

Nevertheless, due to the complexity of the Hungarian pharmaceutical financing system, this budget should not be confused with total pharmaceutical spending. As the aforementioned budget line includes neither subsidies for hospital medicines, nor the amount spent on medicinal products through so-called itemized financing (typical examples include modern oncological and biological therapies). Increasing the latter amount would be necessary to make it possible for patients to access the most advanced therapies.