Madrid, October 1st 2014.- Pharmaceutical expenditure has borne 42% of the total healthcare spending reduction undertaken since 2010. This is the main conclusion included in issue #111 of the pharmaceutical market in Spain’s Monthly Bulletin, monthly elaborated by FARMAINDUSTRIA.

In this issue, the Bulletin states that approximately a third of the Spanish autonomous regions’ budget is allocated to healthcare expenditure. For this reason, it does not come as a surprise that all policies tackling the global reduction of regional public spending have affected, one way or another, healthcare expenditure; as laid out in the 2012 Public Healthcare Expenditure statistics released by Spanish Ministry of Health.

In particular, between 2009 -when it reached its all time peak- and 2012, Spanish public healthcare expenditure was reduced by 6,429 €M. Fro this amount, 2,707 €M correspond to the reduction of public pharmaceutical expenditure, which accounts for a 42.1% of the total drop. Thus, public pharmaceutical expenditure has passed from representing 19% of the total public healthcare expenditure in 2009 to 16.7% in 2012.

As an example of the different yearly reductions, the Bulletin reflects the 2011 and 2012 period where public healthcare expenditure was reduced by 3,900 €M, from which 1,626 M€ were allocated to public pharmaceutical expenditure, which also ac-counted for a fall of 42% of the total (the same as in the 4-year period).

On the other hand, and even though official data is still not available, the Bulletin highlights that there are enough indications to believe that in 2013, public pharmaceutical expenditure will drop again. This will be caused in greater part to the 2012 public pharmaceutical expenditure reduction (over 1,000 €M. according to FARMAINDUSTRIA’s estimations) originating from the withholding of the extraordinary Christmas wage for those Spanish Civil Servants’ working for the NHS. This item was recovered in the 2013 budget, taking into account the subsequent potential reductions to the rest of items under public healthcare expenditure, and also bearing in mind that pharmaceutical spending in Spanish NHS prescriptions had fallen by 6%, will most likely bring about another reduction of public pharmaceutical expenditure in 2013.