Amendment to the Pack Size Ordinance welcomed

28.07.2010 09:35

“It is high time that the proliferation of 49, 56, 98 or 100 tablets in a pack is regulated and the therapeutic equivalence of these packs is clarified,” explains the deputy chairman of the board of AOK Baden-Württemberg and negotiator of the AOK association for the drug discount agreements , Dr. Christopher Hermann. The rejection of the four major pharmaceutical associations against the new regulations does not change the fact that the legislature is on the right track here, said Hermann.

According to Hermann, the AOK expressly welcomes the fact that the Federal Government, with the amendment to the Pack Size Ordinance, clearly regulates which medicine packs in the three standard sizes (N1, N2, N3) can be exchanged for one another in the pharmacy. Hermann: “This ultimately provides clarity for everyone involved and, above all, the trickery of pharmaceutical companies when implementing drug discount agreements is put to an end.”

The background to the amendment is that pharmaceutical companies have so far been allowed to offer pharmaceutical packs with any content as long as they adhere to certain maximum quantities, which, according to Hermann, sometimes leads to exotic quantities. “The manufacturers want to prevent their preparation from being exchanged for a slightly different package in the pharmacy,” says Hermann, explaining the background to the strategy. “It started with the suppliers of original preparations who wanted to protect their medication from being replaced by a copycat product after the patent protection expired.”