Bulgarian Pharmacies to Stop Sale of Reimbursed Medicines

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.

From Novinite

BULGARIAN DOCTORS SET TO RECEIVE NOVEMBER PAY

The National Health Insurance Fund (NZOK) is beginning to pay Monday the November money to doctors and hospitals.

Hospitals are to receive BGN 87.5 M while family practitioners are getting BGN 12 M, specialists – BGN 13 M, dentists – BGN 7.7 M and medical labs – BGN 5 M.

NZOK announcement further notes that with the Monday transfer, their Director, Nellie Nesheva, had fulfilled her commitment to make up for the delay in payments, which began at the beginning of 2009.

"
Despite the extremely difficult financial situation and claims NZOK would not pay its contracted partners for October and November, (payments for December are always transferred in January of the following year), the institution's leadership fulfilled its commitments and was able to secure the needed amounts,"
the announcement reads.