Government plans to reduce health costs, expected to be adopted by the Council of Ministers on Friday by means of a royal decree, include making pensioners pay, or pay more, for prescription medicines.
Under the proposals, pensioners who do not pay anything towards prescription costs would pay 10% of the cost. However, a safeguard to protect the chronically ill, would mean that anyone paying more than €10 a month for three consecutive months would have anything in excess of €30 returned.
Active citizens who currently pay 40% of the prescription cost will see their contribution raised to 50%. Anyone earning above €100,000 per year would pay an extra 20%, namely 60% of the prescription costs.
These measures would account for almost half of the €7 billion the government wants to wants to trim from the health budget.