Hungarian pharma policy is the focus of upcoming election campaigns

Debate on health care and pharmaceutical policy in the run up to the Hungarian elections in April 2006 is more and more heated. The main opposition party, the center right FIDESZ, plans to re-regulate the pharmaceutical market through a five-year agreement with drug manufacturers, similarly to their three-year agreement signed in 2002, when price increases were allowed only up to 70% of the actual rate of inflation.

The incumbent socialist-liberal government breached this agreement in June 2004 and agreed with manufacturers not to increase the price of reimbursed drugs until the end of 2006. Currently, the prices paid by patients depend only on the government's increasingly strict reimbursement policy. The socialists are also planning to re-negotiate the terms of a new, four-year agreement. The election manifesto of FIDESZ promises free medication for children aged under three and the elderly above the age of 65 for certain treatments: antipyretics, cardiovascular, anti-allergy and anti-cancer drugs.

The newly elected president of the Hungarian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association, Erik Bogsch (who is chief executive of Richter Gedeon), emphasized that drugmakers in Hungary are ready to conclude a long-term agreement with the new government in order to establish a stable and predictable environment for the pharmaceutical industry for the 2007-2013 period. According to Mr Bogsch, the member companies' turnover in 2005 was 480.0 billion forint ($2.26 billion); their exports reached 300.0 billion forint; and they spent 73.0 billion forint on investment and 34.0 billion forint on R&D.