Medicines are an essential component of healthcare. They can help us stay healthy, recover from disease or live longer. But high medicine prices are putting pressure on national health budgets, requiring governments to make ever more difficult decisions about which medicines should be reimbursed by the state and which shouldn’t be.

As the EU rolls out its Pharmaceutical Strategy and is preparing to review legislation, it is important that policymakers are aware of consumers’ attitudes on medicine pricing. To get more data on such attitudes, BEUC commissioned focus groups in three European countries – Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. The results provide a snapshot of consumers’ opinions and expectations on medicine pricing.