Patients’ Association Asks Portugal’s Ombudsman to Speed Up Generic Medicine Access

Portugal’s association of generic-medicine users has asked Ombudsman Luísa Neto to intervene so that cheaper medicines reach patients more quickly, arguing the move could unlock roughly €300 million a year in additional Portugal generic medicines savings for households and the Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS).

On Wednesday 19 August 2026, the UMG — Associação de Utentes de Medicamentos Genéricos — met the Provedora de Justiça in the first of about 20 institutional meetings it has scheduled through October. The association’s case is that whenever a generic meets quality, safety and efficacy standards, “there should be no unnecessary delays” stopping patients and the SNS from using it. There has been no public response yet from the Ombudsman’s office.

UMG Calls for Faster Generic Medicine Access

UMG was formed on 6 July 2026 and describes itself as Portugal’s first association created specifically to defend users of generic medicines. Physician António Oliveira de Andrade, president of its assembly, has framed it as a consumer-defence organisation born from conversations with health professionals, small pharmacists and patients.

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The association is asking the Ombudsman to press for celeridade — speed — across authorisation, pricing, reimbursement and practical availability, rather than any change in scientific standards. Luísa Neto, a University of Porto constitutional-law and fundamental-rights professor and former president of the Instituto Nacional de Administração, took office on 15 July 2026 after a long vacancy; administrative delay sits squarely within the office’s mandate.

Portugal Generic Medicines Savings: The Numbers Behind the €300 Million Target

UMG’s headline ask rests on a series of figures it says point to unrealised potential. Generic market share stood at 50.5% in April 2026, down from 52.2% in 2024. The association wants to reach 75%, a level it notes is exceeded in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands, where ambulatory generic shares top 80%.

The arithmetic: generics already delivered more than €666 million in savings in 2025, just below 2024’s €670.5 million, and the Associação Nacional de Farmácias puts cumulative released resources above €7.2 billion since 2011. UMG estimates that reaching a 75% share would add a further €300 million a year, taking the total close to €1 billion.

The association has separately urged doctors to prescribe newly available dapagliflozin generics — about 50% cheaper for patients — rather than switching to molecules that still lack a generic, estimating €45 million a year in state savings and benefit for roughly 900,000 people with type 2 diabetes.

A Stalled Headline Share and a Widening Gap

Headline share has hovered around 50–52% for about five years and recently slipped. Infarmed’s explanation is that overall generic volume is still rising — generic sales grew 7.7% in the year to May 2026 — but the non-generic segment, typically newer medicines without a generic, is growing faster. In the competitive subset where a generic already exists, utilisation reached 67.4% in May 2026, up from 65.1% in May 2024.

That distinction matters. Industry group Equalmed, which represents generic manufacturers, cites the same 50.5% figure to argue the opposite: very low Portuguese prices combined with rising transport and energy costs threaten supply, and it wants price reviews and stronger prescribing incentives. Users want faster cheap alternatives; producers want economically viable ones.

Regulatory Bottlenecks and the Ombudsman’s Role

Infarmed authorised 928 new medicines in 2025, 79% of them generics, so the regulator is not blocking generics as a category. The bottlenecks are more often downstream or legal — patent litigation, the timing of pricing and reference-price grouping, reimbursement, and whether pharmacies stock the cheaper option.

The same week, the government changed free-medicine rules for Complemento Solidário para Idosos (CSI) beneficiaries, capping extra reimbursement at the reference price so patients are not steered to a dearer brand when a cheaper option exists — a parallel, government-side push to raise generic use after monitoring found a slight drop in low-cost dispensing.

What Comes Next

The Provedoria can open an inquiry, request information from Infarmed and the Ministry of Health, and issue recommendations — but it cannot order a generic onto the market or rewrite pricing law. UMG’s immediate goal appears to be agenda-setting: placing administrative delay on the record of a newly installed Ombudsman and establishing itself as a recognised stakeholder.

Whether the €1 billion arithmetic holds depends on which products shift; moving share in already-competitive groups is not the same as replacing high-cost originators that still lack a generic. The remaining gap is a mix of new molecules, prescribing habits, pharmacy stock and legal timing — the last of which is precisely what UMG is asking the Ombudsman to scrutinise.