This article was automatically translated from HIBAPRESS, the Arabic version:
This article was automatically translated from Hibapress, the Arabic version:
Heba Press- Abdul Latif Baraka
The controversy continues in Morocco on drug prices, after official data has revealed enormous beneficiary margins for certain companies, which can reach 300%, at a time when large groups of citizens complain about the high cost of drugs and their purchasing power, which deepens the crisis in access to treatment and threatens the sustainability of full health coverage.
Although the Ministry of Health has announced discounts which included the prices of 17 drugs, going between 4 and 319 dirhams, consumer protection companies considered this “insufficient” step and described it as “symbolism”, especially since the majority of discounts do not exceed 20 dirhams, but sometimes reach only 17 dirhams, which have been described as ” most consumed drugs.
– brilliant discs despite the organized decree
Irony is that the regulatory decree for the pricing of drugs in Morocco stipulates that the prices of imported or local drugs are not exceeded in a number of reference countries, including France, Spain and Belgium. But the reality of the market reveals shocking violations, because certain drugs are sold in Morocco at higher prices than their counterparts in European countries, despite the big difference in the level of individual income and purchasing power.
A study carried out by the National Fund for Social Reserve Organizations, in cooperation with the customs administration, has confirmed that the prices of a large number of drugs on the local market are higher than the price authorized in customs, and even higher than what is in place in France and Belgium, which increases the prohibitions on the extent of respect for legal controls for drug prices.
Has the tax reduced the market to save?
In order to relieve the price load, the financial law of 2024 came with a qualitative procedure represented in the exemption from all the drugs of the value tax, after 85% of the drugs were subject to a 7% tax. Although this procedure has provided approximately a billion dirhams for the benefit of patients and insurance funds, medical supplies are still subject to a 20%tax, which weighs the total cost of treatment.
– Genpsa drugs. Conditional hope
Genetic and biological acts are presented as a radical solution to reduce expenses and ensure fair access to treatment. The data show that this category represented approximately 56.6% and 49% in terms of the value of the drugs sold in 2023, and contributed to the supply of 4.54 billion dirhams of expenditure.
However, despite this role, the proportion of generic drugs on the market has not reached the levels of the main countries in this area, because specialists think that this percentage can be increased between 70 and 80%, provided that a real national policy is adopted which supports local manufacturing and stimulates the use of generic drugs.
-New institutions … Do you head for change?
In the midst of this situation, two new institutions have been established which should play a detailed role in the sector reform: the Supreme Health Authority, which will become the main reference in the identification of health policies and the quality guarantee, and the Moroccan agency for drugs and health products, which will be able to approach the prices of drugs in a transparent way, and will have financial and administrative independence, so that it can discuss the prices of drugs Transparently, and has financial and administrative independence, so that this can discuss the prices of medicines, and have financial and administrative independence, so that this can approach the prices of medicines, and will present itself transparent, and to financial and administrative independence, so that this can approach the prices of drugs, and the presentations transparently.
– a mysterious future between reform and respect for the current situation
With the generalization of health coverage and the expansion of the beneficiary circle to more than 36 million people, the need for drugs increases at fair and lasting prices, so that this expansion does not turn into a financial burden that threatens the permanence of the health system.
Do the central question remain: do the responsible authorities have the political will and the technical capacity to implement a global and effective reform, which restores the balance between citizen’s law to medicine and the capacity of the State to secure it? Or that the interests of actors on the market will remain a stumbling block in front of all the serious attempts to reform?
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