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Pharmacy owners ask the Court to declare the regulation null

The 30% discount on medicines, which came into effect on August 15, continues to cause hives. Owners of the pharmacies warn of millionaire losses in their premises, which can generate the unemployment of 4,500 workers.

Members of the National Union of Pharmacy Owners (Unprofa) yesterday asked the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) to suspend Executive Decree No. 17 of August 10, 2022, which authorizes a list of 170 drugs of greatest consumption and need with a 30% off.

According to the president of this union, Orlando Pérez, both the decree and the resolution threaten free enterprise and the jobs of more than 4,500 employees. “We want the immediate suspension and that we look for other alternatives that benefit the population and that do not allow the private pharmacies that generate sources of employment, pay taxes, to disappear,” Pérez said.

The patients’ leader, Alexander Pineda, indicated that everyone defends their right and who defends the patient’s right to receive their medications at a fair and reasonable price? I have questioned.

‘We repeat it and then wait for distributor laboratories and pharmacies to resolve it. They have been keeping their profits for years. It’s not fair,’ Pineda said.

Enma Pinzón, president of the Rheumatoid Arthritis Foundation of Panama, denounced that they have received information from some patients who assure that there are products on the list that they are not finding and that in pharmacies that have discounts greater than those approved in the decree, Medicine prices have gone up.

It should be noted that when the 30% discount came into force, more than 450 pharmacies closed their doors for two days. They returned to provide the service, on August 17, when they had supposedly reached an agreement with the government after arduous meetings. On that occasion, the Government announced that a new ministerial resolution was drawn up with the objective that the 30% discount on 170 medicines starts from pharmaceutical houses.

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Analysis The labor consultant, René Quevedo cited that the INEC Labor Report indicates that 2 out of 3 workers in the Commerce sector are informal or work in companies with less than 10 workers, so unilateral reductions in the profit margin at the point of sale (in this case small pharmacies) endangers their subsistence, as they cannot absorb them.