The high cost of breathing in Ireland?
Took my usual trip to the local Pharmacia here in Calahonda this morning to stock up for next 6 months.
Ventolin and Becotide manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline same manufacturer and brands as I get in Ireland, that’s unfortunately where the similarity ends.
Spain €7.11c
Ireland €59.42
For the same brand and both EU countries.
Who on earth is profiteering from this? anyone got any idea’s?
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Has been the same for years – I stock up when I’m over (or when folks are coming home) GSK or Revenue are making a fortune somewhere!
Price compare on a tube of zovirax too if you see one – scary.
But Pat, pharmacists in Ireland are hard done by… no, really.
I know, this because I heard them on the radio so often earlier this year (when they were in that spat with the HSE over reduced compensation for issuing “free” medical card prescriptions).
It seems the poor pharmacists are so hard up they’d be forced out of business at the slightest reduction in state compensation.
Makes you wonder how Spanish pharmacists survive at all. Must be down to the higher overheads/cost of doing business here in Ireland
.
Practically same prices apply for Lipitor – A Cholesterol drug.
So in my case I can look forward to dying young and broke!
Twitter: topgold
25th July, 2008 at 2:39 pm
The way I see it, the HSE will have to charter flights for Irish pensioners to buy their prescribed drugs in Spain, otherwise a whole generation will be living in Pharmacy Poverty.
Or, Anthony, you could move to Spain and die old and suntanned….
How heavily subsidised by the government are drugs in spain?
The prices are fixed in Spain by the government. The price the makers want to charge is about the Irish level.
It gets better. Thanks to parallel trade within the EU, wholesalers in Greece especially (again with fixed prices) order massive amounts of medicines and export them to higher cost countries (especially the UK and Germany).
GSK looks set to lose a european court case where the firm allegedly tried to stop supplying a Greek or Cypriot wholesaler on the grounds the latter was shipping most of its stuff out.
Jaysus I never heard of this, that’s a bloody ridiculous disparity.
Pat,
I feel like askng you to pick me up a batch. I had exactly the same experience in Spain. To add insult to injury you don’t have to pay a prescription as you can just pick these drugs up over the counter (makes perfect sense).
Combine this with the tragically high rate of subvention before you get your drugs for free and just about any asthma sufferer ends up paying top whack for drugs in Ireland.
A disgrace.
Joe.
Ventolin costs each patient less than two euros over here in New Zealand. The Govt pays the first 2 euros (NZ$3.80) and you pay a bit extra yourself.
Salamol & Respigen (salbutamol just like Ventolin) are fully funded so you pay nothing for them.
Drug companies always charge what the market will bear – ie as much as they can get – they are in business – the Pharmacist ditto.
Hey Pat,
If I rabbit on about this too much you’ll think I’m a crank, but the truth is since I looked into Buteyko breathing I haven’t used an inhaler. I looked into it initially because I was rapidly going from 1 or 2 inhalers a year to 1 a month… never looked back.
Worth checking out to see if it’s for you or yours…
Cheers,
Frank
It’s enough to bring on a wheeze.
I had a similar experience in Tuscany last year. Ventolin cost a mere fraction (I think a similar price to that of Spain) of what it costs in Ireland.
Sure isn’t it simple supply and demand economics at play? We’ve quite a few asthmatics here in Ireland so all this demand is bound to drive up prices!
I see a niche for a new Pat Phelan venture
HI
Similar in our case, my wife takes medication that in Ireland is €100 a box and in Spain the same box over the counter for just under €10 so we do the same buy lots when we go over to last a few months or get family to buy it over there and post it to us.
No excuse for the prices over here.
I have to agree that prices of medicines in Ireland are ridiculously high, but in fairness same goes for just about everything else.
Ventolin as such oddly enough isn’t too expensive (only about €3 + 50% markup + dispensing fee so about €8 in total), but becotide, flixotide and especially seretide and symbicort are just extortionate. Really don’t know how to explain this, other than Ireland being a small market and low taxes mean you pay more elsewhere. Still better in and out of our pockets than straight to the government’s coffers I think.
I told my chemists last Friday that the 1st time they tell me they will not give me my meds (I have diabetes and use insulin) I will go to one of the 2 chemists in town who are still open on the long term scheme and never go back.
I am an accountant and have done audits in this sector. There is no issue with profit, just expectations.
keith
Twitter: shanekny
4th August, 2009 at 9:13 pm
As far as I know Pat, the government set the price here, a HSE guy said as much there on Newstalk today. I know a few Pharmacists and they always say they would prefer to issue generic brands over branded products (which would bring down prices through competition), but its the Doctors, no doubt having benfited from the odd Pharmacuticals sponsored Golf trips, who continue to prescribe the more expensive branded products. Yet another example of state and ‘old guard’ supported corruption on our fair Isle.
J.
if so unprofitable why come individual owners have up to 10 stores ? They are still screwing non-medical card holders .
dose any one know if i can get symbicort 400 12 in spane and at what cost it is 89/00 euro