Price reductions on medications: Lyashko explained the future of social programs (video).

Victor Lyashko, the head of the Ministry of Health, assured that there is no risk of terminating social programs for medications. He stated this during a telethon broadcast.

Lyashko noted that there was a discussion with manufacturers about providing credit notes or launching patient programs as a form of marketing support, and all necessary issues were resolved through government regulations.

"All patient programs that were operational before March 1 will continue to function. There is no risk of their disappearance," he added.

Lyashko emphasized that if any disappearance were to occur, it would not be related to the regulations implemented by the government.

The Minister of Health of Ukraine also mentioned that the government is introducing a new pricing system for medications in Ukraine, which will include reference prices from European countries and markup limitations. Domestic manufacturers have already agreed to reduce prices starting March 1.

"According to our analysts, we observed that Ukrainians are purchasing the most in packages from Ukrainian manufacturers and that the total expenditure is the highest. Ukrainian producers have stated that they are ready to reduce the prices of these 100 medications by 30% starting March 1. They discussed with us, as regulators, what they expect from the regulation of legal acts in Ukraine and signed a declaration guaranteeing the reduction of retail prices from March 1," noted the Minister of Health.

The government is also implementing a series of additional measures to regulate prices. In particular, it is planned to set a markup on all medications, not just those from the National list. Additionally, marketing payments will be prohibited until the reference pricing system is implemented.

"This means we will compare prices for similar medications in Eastern European countries — we have already modeled and identified about nine countries with which we will work. The manufacturer must declare their price, but it must not exceed the reference price that we will establish. If the price exceeds the reference, we will not allow that medication to be sold in our pharmacies, and a corresponding markup will also be applied. All of this will lead to a comprehensive further reduction in medication prices, so we are working to ensure that Ukrainians remain healthy and, in case of illness, can access the medications that will help them during that specific time," concluded the minister.

Recall that the head of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine, Victor Lyashko, previously warned that hospitals are not allowed to charge for medications, X-rays, and CT scans if the patient was hospitalized with ARVI and COVID-19.