RESTRICTIONS ON THE REIMBURSEMENT POLICY WITH REGARD TO RETAIL MARKETING OF MEDICINAL PRODUCTS IN POLAND

On January 1, 2012, the law of 12 May 2011 on the reimbursement of medicines, food products of special nutritional purpose and medicinal products, intended to tighten up the reimbursement system, came into force in Poland. The new legislative act has significantly altered the previous principles of retail marketing of products subject to publicly financed reimbursement. First of all, the prices of reimbursed products have been unified through the introduction of fixed margins and prices and a ban - completely unknown until now - on using free market sales practices. These regulations are intended to lead to the abolition of price competition and its replacement with competition as to the quality of services provided by pharmacies. At the same time, entities engaged in retail marketing of medicinal products have been imposed a number of new obligations and highly repressive penalties for failure to fulfill them. The paper analyzes the legislative changes and points out the consequences, both those which can already be seen and the predictable ones. The assumed priority and criterion of evaluation of the reimbursement policy in question is its impact on the functioning of pharmacies which, according to the premises of Polish pharmaceutical law, should play the role of public health protection institutions.