New "Health Pact" in Spain

The Spanish health minister, Trinidad Jiménez, announced after the last Interterritorial Council meeting in Madrid a new agreement ("gran acuerdo") that will help to save 1.500 million Euros for the Spanish health system. Major parts of the savings are supposed to come from pharmaceutical expenditure cuts via measures such as:

- New therapeutic reference price system for drugs more than 10 years on the market
- Price decrease for generic medicines (25% on average)
- Price freeze / cap for medications for minor symptomatic treatments
etc...

Several other changes are also being implemented especially in relation to equality of access and efficiency of the system. The PP (Partido Popular)at the same time announced that economic evaluations will have to become a key component in order to sustain the Spanish NHS and urged the creation of a Spanish NICE...

Right after Germany's announcements a week earlier, Spain has now followed suit in targeting pharmaceutical expenditures as a main source for cost savings. Farmaindustria, the local industry association, is deeply concerned about the effects on R&D activity as well as employment in the sector - so far one of the remaining ´locomotives´ for growth in a widening economic downturn.

For the Spanish speaking readers I post below link with some more info on the topic.
http://www.elglobal.net/articulo.asp?idcat=641&idart=469995