February 12, 2012
Antonis Karokis’ medicines business is being squeezed by price cuts and unpaid hospital debts. But he is stoical – after all, he enjoyed the years of excess when Greece was an unusually large market for drugs.
“There were no controls on spending in the past, the whole system favoured consumption,” says the director for Merck, the US pharmaceutical group, in Greece. “It was not only supplier-led, but demand-led by doctors and patients.”
Greece’s continuing high level of spending on medicines is a striking example of the broader problems facing the country as it battles under international pressure to cut public expenditure and rein in the nation’s debt.
Last year the Greek state and private healthcare sectors spent €4bn on medicines alone, amounting to 2.4 per cent of GDP – the highest proportion in any industrialised country and more than twice that in the UK. Greece spends more per capita on drugs than any nation except the US and Canada.
“There was a big party going on,” says professor Nikos Maniadakis from the Athens School of Public Health, describing the lucrative system that few wanted to end.
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