[Meta] the Apotheke rule is doing its job and people should stop complaining
the Apotheke rule is doing its job and people should stop complaining — posting the reasoning in public because a policy you cannot inspect is just a preference.
Published reimbursement criteria exist in most member states and are usually available in the national language. They are the authoritative answer to eligibility questions that this board can only guess at.
Compared prices across two neighbouring countries and found the difference was mostly pack size once I normalised it.
Nothing here is medical or legal advice, and eligibility questions have national answers that a pharmacist where you live can give you in minutes.
Would rather be corrected in public than confident in private.
best — the order this archive was captured in
On cross-border prescriptions, since the assumption behind half these threads is wrong.
There are EU rules on the recognition of prescriptions issued in another member state, and they are conditional: the prescription has to meet requirements about its form and content, certain categories are excluded, and pharmacies retain discretion in practice.
The result is that "my prescription will be accepted anywhere in the EU" is not a safe assumption, and members here have discovered it at a counter in another country. If it matters for a trip, check before you travel with the pharmacy and with somebody qualified where you are. Nothing on this board is advice about that, and the rules are national in their application whatever the framework says.
Country added to the title — the answers differ across the union and the thread is unusable without it.
On cross-border prescriptions, since the assumption behind half these threads is wrong.
Adding the practical step — read your own country’s published criteria. They exist and they are definitive.
keep the prescription and the receipt, both matter for claims
Pharmacy margins and dispensing fees are regulated nationally, which explains price differences that otherwise look arbitrary.
Marketing authorisation is granted centrally for these products; reimbursement, pricing and prescribing criteria are national competences. Those are decided by different bodies with different processes.
Correcting myself upthread: the criterion I quoted was updated for this year.
The translation cost of dealing with a foreign pharmacy was the thing I had not budgeted for.
Not convinced — cross-border prescription recognition is narrower than you are describing and the exceptions matter.
Pack sizes and presentations differ between member states, so a headline price is not comparable until it is normalised to a common quantity.
Push back: comparing headline prices across countries without normalising pack size is comparing two different quantities.
Cross-border prescription recognition exists under EU rules but is conditional and narrower than commonly assumed, with requirements about the prescription’s form and content.
Disagree. That is one member state’s reimbursement rule and it does not generalise across the union.
That shortage notice was national and does not apply where the question is coming from.
Correction: that is the authorisation position, and the question was about reimbursement. Different bodies, different answers.
pharmacy margins are regulated differently in each country
Small fix — those two prices are for different pack sizes, which accounts for most of the gap.
pharmacy margins are regulated differently in each country
bilal_adebayo is right about cross-border recognition being narrower than the summaries suggest.
Agreed — authorisation is European, reimbursement is national, and almost every confused thread here misses that split.
Supply notices are issued nationally. A notice in one member state does not imply availability problems in another, even for the same product.
The variation between pharmacies inside my own country was larger than the variation I had been chasing across the border.
Kept the prescription and the receipt for a claim, purely because a thread here told me to. Both were requested.
cross-border prescription rules exist and they are narrower than people think
What does the local patient information leaflet say?
say which country or the thread is useless
the EMA authorises, member states decide who pays
a shortage in one member state is not a shortage in all of them
Yes. Pack sizes differ enough that per-month price comparisons across borders need to be normalised before they mean anything.
- 1Supply notices are issued nationally. A notice in one member state does not…9 comments in this branch · started by u/zaid_eriksen
- 2Cross-border prescription recognition exists under EU rules but is…8 comments in this branch · started by u/nadia_nascimento