CCSS plan to sell drugs to private providers depends on legal standards

After consultation nation, Logistics manager Esteban Vega De la O said the opinion of the legal department will determine the continuity of the strategic management and medicines supply model presented to the board of directors on May 30.

“The project is awaiting the legal standard that will determine its continuity. Until we have this standard, which is in the process of being developed, no other elements can be added beyond what is already known and circulated,” Vega de la O said through its press office.

As told to the board in May, the fund will develop a plan to sell drugs to private health providers to gain new resources for the agency.

At the same time, the project will facilitate access to drugs in the following places: Lower price. The aim is to sell drugs purchased in bulk by the entity to distributors, pharmacies, drugstore chains and private hospitals as part of a complementary public policy model to reduce drug prices in the country.

been: CCSS evaluates drug resale to private pharmacies and hospitals as new revenue source

In May, a pilot program was announced involving 123 medicines commonly used in the private sector and available over the counter.

For a drug like Irbesartan (for blood pressure), the unit cost on the private market is about €217.67 per tablet, while the selling price is €22 per tablet. Even after adding the estimated 23% institutional costs, the difference is still significant for consumers: 87%.

The proposal includes opening an institutional point of sale. This would be a retail pharmacy in San Jose.

The fund’s initiative is expected to become a larger business as it expands to selling reagents and products produced in the agency’s laboratories. It will also offer a hospital bed linen washing service.

The CCSS board approved the plan by a 6-2 vote on June 18. Vega said the goal is to affect the price citizens pay for drugs and generate more revenue for the agency, but he did not specify.

Mixed reactions to CCSS drug sales

The issue was discussed at two regular board meetings on May 30 and June 18. The board requested a number of technical standards, including those from the legal and finance departments, that must be submitted before the point-of-sale pilot program is launched on July 9.

We are waiting for legal standards. In addition, the highest decision-making body of the CCSS has not been able to hold meetings normally because Only three of its nine members remain.

been: CCSS expects drug resale business to grow

The proposal has drawn mixed reactions from both inside and outside the fund’s board. The institute’s labor representative, Martha Rodriguez Gonzalez, opposed it from the start, saying it was a campaign promise and warning that it was not the fund’s job to regulate drug prices.

The possible problems with the model mentioned by Rodriguez Gonzalez are as follows:

• Shift to a privatized healthcare model.
• It does not guarantee that market prices will fall.
• It puts the supply of medicines at risk.
• It violates national and international legal systems.
• It constitutes an illegal and unconstitutional misappropriation of institutional resources.
• It has implications for financial sustainability.

For her part, CCSS Executive President Marta Eugenia Esquivel Rodríguez defended the proposed model, which she said would require a year of work.

#This is not an event or invention of the Executive Chairman. This was an exercise of the 2023 Board of Directors with the support of those present at the time. It does not impact sustainability. When you approved the 2022 rate hike, some said you should look for alternatives for new revenue, but that action never materialized,” Esquivel said.

been: Pharmacists concerned about CCSS causing drug shortages due to sale of services to private individuals

For the College of Pharmacists, the plan would put the supply of medicines in the public health service at risk.

“Even now, without the strategy they want to develop for the private market, there are still shortfalls. It is very important for Social Security to focus on its priorities: insured people and health.

“We are concerned that the move towards the private sector could lead to shortages of the most important products and daily medical prescriptions,” the association’s president, José Gatgens, said in late June.