Generic Medicine Makers Want a 5 Percent Price Rise in 2027, and a New Patients' Group Answers That Prices Alone Will Not End Shortages
Equalmed says thin margins are pushing generics off the market. The users' association UMG wants more competition instead, noting generics are 52 percent of the Portuguese market against 70 percent in Europe.
Two associations are pulling in opposite directions over what Portugal should pay for generic medicines. The industry body for generics and biosimilars wants prices of off-patent drugs raised by at least 5 percent in 2027, warning of shortages. A new association of generic medicine users replied on Tuesday that any price change must come with more competition and more supply, or patients will simply pay more.
The manufacturers' case
The Associação Portuguesa de Medicamentos pela Equidade em Saúde (Equalmed), which represents makers of generics and biosimilars, set out its demands last Thursday, the day the 2027 State Budget was presented to parliament. It wants the annual price review for 2027 to update prices of medicines no longer protected by patent by no less than 5 percent.
It also asks the government to scrap the extraordinary contribution levied on the pharmaceutical industry or, failing that, to cut it to 2.5 percent for generics and biosimilars sold to hospitals, and to change the incentives for doctors and pharmacists so that they prescribe and dispense more generics.
Equalmed's president, João Paulo Nascimento, said supply chains for generics have struggled for years, making production "unsustainable" in many cases in a sector with thin margins. He blamed energy and logistics costs, inflation, the shift of production out of Europe, the pandemic and current international conflicts. "Shortages of several molecules in pharmacies are frequent, and hospital tenders very often receive no bids," he said.
The association's figures show the shrinking supply. In the 12 years to July 2026, 2,453 presentations of medicines were withdrawn from the pharmacy market and 5,191 from the hospital market. Generics discontinued in pharmacies this year sold for an average of 5.80 euros a pack. More than 326,000 packs of generics are dispensed in Portuguese pharmacies every day, at prices on average 55.3 percent below the original brand.
The users' reply
The Associação dos Utentes de Medicamentos Genéricos (UMG), created in July, said on Tuesday that the request must be judged in the "broader context of how the market works", including its effects on competition, availability and the bills paid by patients and the National Health Service (SNS). "We want more generic medicines available, at affordable prices, fewer shortages in pharmacies and more competition," it said, in a statement carried by Lusa.
The UMG points out that generics make up about 52 percent of the Portuguese market by volume, against 70 percent across Europe in 2023. It wants the State to remove legal, administrative and regulatory barriers that delay the arrival of generics and biosimilars, and warns that a price review must not become a pretext for further rises in brand-name medicines where competition is limited.
What it means at the pharmacy counter
Generic prices in Portugal are set by the State in an annual review, so any rise would show up both in what patients pay at the counter and in the SNS's reimbursement bill. Patients already paid 571 million euros at pharmacy counters in the first seven months of the year. Shortages are a live concern too: earlier this month the medicines authority Infarmed barred exports of 52 scarce medicines.
The 2027 price review is the government's call. Neither the Ministry of Health nor Infarmed had responded publicly to the two associations in the reports published by Tuesday morning.
