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Victoria Mindova 

Greek pharmacies will cease to prescribe free drugs as of 1 September as a protest against the delay by the National Organization for Health Care Provision to pay its 2010 and 2011 debts to pharmacists. The total amount due for the period is 300 million euro. In addition to it, pharmacists in more than 20 municipalities are waiting for the payment of their costs of free medicines prescribed in May and June 2012.

On 10 August, 19 municipalities in Greece stopped dispensing prescriptions and all pharmacies in the country are expected to take similar actions in the beginning of next month. Different opinions on whether to start active strike actions or not were expressed during the discussions held in the National Union of Pharmacists, which unites the regional trade union organizations in the sector. The discord in the positions and the difficulty of the situation led to the resignation of the president of the National Union of Pharmacists Theodoros Abatzoglou. In a statement Abatzoglou said, "After the chaos that has been established and due to the lack of a single position in decision making, I can represent the sector neither before the public, nor before the government. Therefore, I submit my resignation to the management board of the union."

GRReporter contacted the vice president of the Union of Pharmacists in Athens Stelios Kalogeropoulos to explain the situation. "The National Organization for Health Care Provision has outstanding obligations for May and June to pharmacists in different municipalities. Others, however, were paid for only one of the two months. Only the May costs of the Union of Pharmacists in Athens for the dispensation of free medicines were covered. The costs of June, however, have not been paid. In other words, the state owes pharmacists a large amount of money for different months. Furthermore, there are also outstanding obligations to the amount of 400 million euro for prescriptions dispensed in 2010 and 2011. What we want is to deduct the state obligations from the tax liabilities of pharmacists in order for the system to continue to operate. Another option is the repayment of these funds from the financial support contract."

Abatzoglou explained that the delayed payments from the state bring many pharmacists to bankruptcy and they are entered in the Terisia blacklist of unfair payers. When an entrepreneur, a sole trader or a company enters this list, it loses most of its rights, it cannot take goods on credit, nor can it hope for a bank loan. The lack of cash against their will makes the owners of pharmacies to delay their payment of imposed taxes and fees as well as the periods for payment of obligations to pharmaceutical wholesalers and importers.

Lack of funds in the state budget to cover the cost of free medicines shifts the burden to pharmaceutical unions, and thus to the people having health insurance, who expect to receive the medicines they need on time. On the one hand, pharmacists are willing pharmaceutical companies and wholesalers to give them more time to meet their obligations to them. On the other hand, they urge the government to provide government guarantees, which will allow pharmaceutical unions to obtain bank loans to continue to supply the pharmacies with expensive drugs. The direct funding to the National Organization for Health Care Provision and the health insurance funds in Greece amount to 0.4% of GDP. Pharmacists are willing this funding to increase to 0.6% of GDP, as it was before the recent budget cuts, in order to prevent the health system from collapsing.

Stelios Kalogeropoulos noted that pharmaceutical companies and wholesalers allow a much longer grace period for public hospitals and pharmacies than their private counterparts do. According to the expert, the period to cover the obligations of drugs delivered to public hospitals can reach between eight and twelve months, whereas private pharmaceutical unions require the drugs delivered to be paid within a week. "What we offer is pharmaceutical suppliers give us a 4-5 months grace in the payment of orders. We will thus be able to supply the people insured with the drugs they need and we will receive from the state the money for the dispensed prescriptions for free drugs."

The vice president of the Union of Pharmacists in Athens said that unless concrete decisions are taken the insured people would be caught in the vicious circle of crisis. He explained that the next tranche of financial assistance to Greece provided 1.5 billion euro to cover the black hole in the National Organization for Health Care Provision. This figure includes government obligations to pharmacies. The money for May and June should be paid to the accounts of pharmaceutical associations to the middle of September. The split in the sector, however, is between the owners of pharmacies, who trust the government and believe that it will keep its promise and those, who believe that the government is only trying to buy time with empty promises. It is certain for the time being that pharmacists in Greece will go on strike and although they will not close the pharmacies, they will not dispense prescriptions for free medicines. Pharmacists from the municipalities of Attica, Ahaias and Piraeus are not yet sure, whether they will take part in the protest. They will make the decision after the general meetings of regional unions.