Rising Drug Prices in Lebanon: Patients with Incurable Diseases Face Tenfold Increase

Ragana Diet wrote:
Between the 1,500-pound dollar approved by the ministries’ budgets and the 15,000-pound dollar decided by the Banque du Liban, in early February, as an official price for all transactions in the country, patients with some incurable diseases are facing a new rise in drug prices that amounts to ten times what they currently pay, especially medicines. Classified D and (E1, E2) (this is the category of drugs whose prices range between 100 and 300 dollars within the D segment, and between 300 and 700 dollars for the E1 segment, and above that for the E2 segment).

The difference between the two prices prompted the Ministry of Health to search for “alternatives” by raising the price of medicines “which are given to those secured from the guarantee funds who are not patients of the Ministry of Health, and which do not fall within the new tracking system approved by the Ministry.” This decision includes, if it follows its path to implementation, many drugs, including kidney transplant drugs, dangerous fungus drugs taken in hospitals, or cancer drugs outside treatment protocols, and others.

Practically, we are not facing a new increase in subsidies, but medicines that are not taken under the guise of treatment protocols or the system, patients of the guarantor funds will pay ten times more for them. One of the most important consequences of this decision is that it allows drug importers to be free from the subsidy mechanism and to buy drugs that will be available in the market, but their high prices will not make them accessible to most of those who need them.

And after the Banque du Liban’s decision to officially transfer the dollar from 1,500 pounds to 15,000 pounds, a solution had not been reached, until last week, between the bank and the Ministries of Health and Finance to complete work on the Cabinet’s decision to maintain subsidies on medicines, according to the sources of the Central Council of the Banque du Liban. For, “Riyad Salameh confirms that there is no longer any so-called dollar of 1,500 pounds, and that the Ministry of Health, in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance, must resolve the issue on the basis of what happened with regard to public sector salaries, meaning that the support from the ministry’s budget remains on the basis of 1,500 pounds, while it is completed. The rest of the amount, which is 13,500 pounds, is from account 36 belonging to the state.