Reality of Greek public pharma spending

On the occasion of a recent article on public pharmaceutical spending in Greece, Michalis Chimonas, general director of the Greek pharma trade group, SFEE, clarified some data about Greece.

Talking only about one part of the expenditure (outpatient/Private Pharmacy) and drawing conclusions can be misleading as different countries have different systems and different allocation of state budgets. For example, a country may invest in financing the hospital channel, which it controls more, and reimburse private pharmacy less or vice versa.

The figures reported for Greece (Outpatient public expenditure 2,108 million euros [$2,479 million] for 2022) also include PHYK/High Cost Drugs). Unlike most countries, Greece also has a 3rd channel for these drugs that in other markets are distributed between community pharmacies and hospitals. The amount of public expenditure on PHYK, for 2022, amounted to €860 million (~41% of 2,108 million euros). This means that as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), the actual public outpatient expenditure is 0.6% of GDP and not 1.08% as mentioned in the article. This clarification ranks Belgium in 19th place and not in 5th place as the article says.