u/fabio_ibarra

Disagree. That is one member state’s reimbursement rule and it does not generalise across the union.

Small fix — those two prices are for different pack sizes, which accounts for most of the gap.

Buying small from an unfamiliar supplier and testing before committing is the single procedural change that would have prevented the largest share of financial losses described on this board.

Small correction — the shop in that story has no independent testing on file at all, which is different from having a bad record.

nobody gets judged here, that is the entire premise

Was there a point where the information was available and you did not look?

Nothing here is medical advice, and the honest version of most of these posts is that they describe consequences rather than causes.

What would you do differently, specifically?

private pricing varies enormously between neighbouring countries

That was a hold rather than a loss, and it resolved. Updating rather than deleting.

Small fix — those two prices are for different pack sizes, which accounts for most of the gap.

stopping for financial reasons is not a personal failure

Are you comparing the same presentation, or different pack sizes?

Push back: you did not lose that money by being stupid. You lost it to a shop with nothing verifiable on file, which is a different thing.

That shortage notice was national and does not apply where the question is coming from.

reimbursement is national, not European, and that is the whole board

Agreed. The failures are the part that is missing from every other board, which is why this one matters.

nobody gets judged here, that is the entire premise

Asked in my own language at a local pharmacy and got a clearer answer in five minutes than a fortnight of forum reading.

Yes. Pack sizes differ enough that per-month price comparisons across borders need to be normalised before they mean anything.

Correction: that is the authorisation position, and the question was about reimbursement. Different bodies, different answers.

That is an authorisation question and you have answered a reimbursement one. They are decided by different bodies.

That reads as a warning about a documented supplier and the events you describe are about a shop nobody has any record of.

Right, and a shortage notice in one country tells you very little about the next one along.

private pricing varies enormously between neighbouring countries