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costa calida EDITION
Your English Newspaper
roundtownnews.com
8 - 14 february 2013
Issue 15
First repayments made to Murcian pensioners The Murcian health service has this week made the first payments to pensioners who paid out more than 8 euros in a single month towards the cost of their prescriptions. by
Learn more about how traditional meat products are made
A celebration of Murcian gastronomy Alhama de Murcia are holding their third annual event which focuses on the theme of the Matanza, and is a chance for expats to learn more about how the traditional meat products of the region are made, as well as sample them. Read the full story on page 58.
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This follows a change in the law last year, creating a co-pago health system, whereby pensioners who had previously received their medication free, had to pay 10% of the value of their prescriptions, up to a maximum value of 8 euros per month for those with lower income levels. Any payments over the 8 euro mark would be refunded once the new system had been set in place. It has taken 8 months for all the new structure to be fully implemented, a massive task for the Regional Health Service, which had to wait for the Hacienda Tax Office to send through details of all registered pensioners entitled to repayments, a process which was only completed in the last few days. This week the Regional Health Service has issued the order to pay over 400,000 euros to
more than 55,000 pensioners, which relates to prescriptions issued in July last year. Payments for the successive months will follow shortly. This week the region has also implemented a new system for issuing electronic prescriptions. After a period of testing in the Zona Bﾃ｡sica de Salud de Santomera, the Councillor for Health and Social Policy, Marﾃｭa ﾃ］geles Palacios has this week presented the new electronic system to the centre. She explained that this system would not only benefit the doctors and pharmacists using it, but would also, in its initial phase, allow those who are chronically ill to get their medicines directly from the pharmacies without having to first make a trip to a health centre to ask for a repeat prescription. Continued on page 6