Prices of certain cheap medicine to rise sharply in Switzerland

The price of a box of 20 Ibuprofen 400mg tablets has doubled from CHF5.90 to CHF10.95. Keystone / Christian Beutler

Consumers in Switzerland face higher prices for certain common medicine following a reform of the pricing system that came into force on July 1. Ibuprofen, for example, is doubling in price.

This increase is the result of a change in the way the price of medicine is calculated, which was agreed by the government last year. Under the new system, the manufacturing cost remains the same, but the distribution margin has increased significantly. Value Added Tax has also risen slightly.

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“This new, relatively complicated system mainly affects low-cost medicines, whose prices are rising,” says Yannis Papadaniel, who heads the consumer federation for French-speaking Switzerland. For example, the price of a box of 20 400mg tablets Ibuprofen has doubled from CHF5.90 ($6.50) to CHF10.95.

And while prices for more expensive drugs are tending to fall, Papadaniel argues “this new pricing system is still rather problematic, since we are in a context of inflation”.

Patients will bear the brunt of this reform because “from the moment the medicine is prescribed, there is no way of avoiding the price increase,” he added.

Translated from French by DeepL/jdp

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