The Cabinet at its meeting on Wednesday, 8 November decided to impose reference pricing for drugs in three categories: cardiovascular disease, diabetes and asthma.
"We take five countries: Poland, Latvia, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic and calculate an average the price for Ukraine. In terms of active substance, not the commercial name of the drug. The price of these drugs based on the same components cannot be higher in Ukraine," Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said as quoted by governmental press service.
This policy is designed to reduce the prices of medicines in Ukraine.
"Our decisions would help halving prices of medicines, and refund expenses to patients with chronical asthma and diabetes," Groysman said.
The government is set to launch a system of reimbursement of the costs of medicines for the treatment of several diseases.
Reference pricing is based on the calculation of price of drugs by comparison of the prices of these drugs in other countries. President Petro Poroshenko instructed the government to impose the reference pricing last spring.