Medicine bill gets cheaper

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Doctors wrote 15% more prescriptions for medicine last year but the average price of drugs fell by 10%, according to figures from the health insurance council CVZ quoted in the Financieele Dagblad.

The price of drugs has gone down because some health insurers are only paying for cheaper generic versions of medicines on which the patent has expired. This has also led some manufacturers to reduce prices, the CVZ said.

Around of the increase in prescriptions is because the birth control pill is once again covered in basic health insurance packages, the organisation said. There was also a 500,000 rise in the number of prescriptions for cholesterol-reducing drugs.

© DutchNews.nl

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