Dive Brief:
- Despite best efforts from pharma, the Greek drug-supply chain may be severely disrupted if Greece leaves the Euro zone and reinstitutes the drachma as the nation's currency, an industry trade association told the European Commission.
- The concern is that drugs intended for import into Greece may be diverted to other countries.
- In addition to the problem of arbitrage, there is the potential of a complete breakdown in the Greek drug supply chain, which is complex.
Dive Insight:
While large pharma companies, such as Roche, Novartis, Pfizer, and Sanofi are determined to do the right thing morally and keep the drugs coming in to an all-but-completely-bankrupt Greece, their efforts may be undermined by traders looking to re-export drugs to other countries in order to pocket the additional profits. Therefore, many companies would like to temporarily curb this aspect of the European free trade rules, wich allow parallel trade.
As it stands now, drug companies are owed more than $1.2 billion by Greek hospitals, as well as the state-run health insurer, EOPYY. Payments have not been made since December 2014, and the debt crisis is worsening every day.