Patients may be left without modern therapy

Patients saw the risks of reducing the availability of drugs and increasing the cost of purchasing them in the "second extra" rule, which fully comes into force in Russia from September 2025. Such concerns were expressed by representatives of the All-Russian Union of Patients (VSP) in a letter to the government.

Medical expenses: regions bought ineffective medicines for 10 billion rubles

Doctors prescribed eucalyptus for intestinal infections and calamus, chamomile and oak bark for nasopharyngeal cancer.

According to the rule, if drugs that are fully manufactured in Russia participate in the competition, the remaining applications will be rejected as foreign.

"The list of such drugs is planned to include narcotic and psychotropic drugs, blood products, as well as 215 items from the current list of strategically important drugs," the document says.

The proposed restriction will significantly reduce the annual savings on auctions and, taking into account the annual increase in the need for medicines, will inevitably lead to an increase in healthcare costs and an artificial monopolization of drug production, according to the VSP.

The implementation of the rule may lead to supply disruptions, limited product range and reduced availability of modern therapy for patients, said Yan Vlasov, Co-Chairman of the VSP. And any delay in the provision of the drug or its abrupt replacement negatively affects the condition of patients with certain categories of socially significant diseases, the expert emphasized.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Life commitments: Russians may lose access to modern therapy