Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) decided that the prices in the medicine list whose costs are covered by the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) violated the laws and annulled them, Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Union (BPU) said, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.
In the list, NHIF imposed the surplus charge of the pharmacies to be between 0 and 15 per cent for the final prices of the medicines it pays for. However, a regulation approved by the Cabined in December 2007, envisioned surplus charges of 18, 20 and 22 per cent, respecively, depending on the price of the medicines.
According to SAC, NHIFs list violated the regulation for the conditions, rules and order of regulation and registration of the medicines, the healthcare law, the law on medicines and the national framework contract for 2006.
The fact that NHIFs instructions define the final prices of the medicines violated the law, BPU said as quoted by Dnevnik daily. NHIFs head did not have such power.
Bulgaria's Commission for Protection of Competition had already fined NHIF twice for similar violations, once in 2005 and again in 2008.
