Polemic On Spanish Pharmaceutical Spending

Jose Luis Temes, director general of Insalud in Spain, recently told a Congressional health commission that pharmaceutical spending in Spain over the past ten years has risen at an average yearly rate of 14.7%. He also noted that in 1993 this growth slowed notably to 7.9%, and that in the current year he expects to see a 12% reduction by means of the agreements reached with pharmaceutical companies to reduce their prices by 3% (Marketletters passim).

Mr Temes also made a curious comparison, comments Enrique Gonzalez Hervada, writing in Indufarma, a quarterly magazine published for the Spanish pharmaceutical industry by the Spanish pharmaceutical industry association, Farmaindustria.

Mr Temes said that public spending on pharmaceuticals, which represents 19% of the total health care expenditure in Spain, is higher than the combined budgets of eight ministries, plus other institutions (Marketletter June 13). Mr Gonzalez suggests that Mr Temes, using similar comparisons, should indicate what the remainder of the health care spending bill represents, being four times the budget for pharmaceutical spending for 1994, or what the state's spending on education and social security provision represent in comparative terms?