Bulgarian Pharmacies to Stop Sale of Reimbursed Medicines

Pharamcies in four Bulgarian cities will stop selling reimbursed medicines until December and other towns and cities are expected to follow. Photo by BGNES

Bulgarian pharmacies will stop selling medicines that are reimbursed by the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) until the end of December.

The Bulgarian Association of Owners of Pharmacies has announced that the reason for this decision are the delayed payments by NHIF to pharmacies. For October, NHIF reimbursed BGN 8,6 M instead of the required BGN 32-34 M.

Pharmacies in Sofia, Varna, Burgas and Veliko Tarnovo will be the first to stop selling medicines that are reimbursed by NHIF.

The National Pharmacy Chamber has stated that the cities and towns of Blagoevgrad, Plovdiv, Pernik, Kyustendil, Nova Zagora, Montana, Razgrad, Targovishte and Samokov will follow.

The lack of reimbursed medicines would affect people who have diabetes, cancer, multiple sclerosis and other diseases.

“This is a very big problem. Our expectation is that around Christmas and New Year's Eve there will be no life-saving medicines. The reason is that these medicines are very expensive. The pharmacies do not receive anything for selling them to the people and NHIF just does not have money to pay them,” Anton Valev from the Association of Owners of Pharmacies said.

In his opinion, it is more troubling that NHIF has posted a statement on its website, saying that it had completed the reimbursement for this year and the next payment will be done with the funding from the 2011 state budget.

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