The Greek government is pushing forth with negative and positive drug lists as a way to cut public pharmaceutical expenditure from about €4.3 billion for 2010 to €3.4 billion in 2011. Public pharma expenditure has fallen already significantly from the €5.1 billion in 2009, where €850 million worth of savings were made in 2010, of which €500 million were the result of drug price cuts.
The pharma industry is backing the negative list – prescription-only drugs that should not be reimbursed by the state, which was published last week – in light of the country's huge public debt
