ROMA (ITALPRESS) – The possible relapses on access to care, costs for citizens and the balance of the health system remain at the heart of the debate opened by the AIFA proposal to review the pharmaceutical prontuario and the criteria for reimbursement of medicines. According to the hypothesis advanced by AIFA, for each therapeutic category the price of reimbursement of drugs such as anti-hypertensives or cholesterol medications would be fixed not only among those with the same active ingredient, but within broader therapeutic groups, repaying only up to the cost of the most economical active ingredient. In this scenario, the possible price difference would be borne by the patient, unless the manufacturers decide to reduce the cost of their drugs. A perspective that would risk having immediate consequences for those receiving care, pharmaceutical companies and industry workers. For the president of the Senate Finance Commission, the Legislator Massimo Garavaglia, is a proposal for “absolutely deleterious” revision for the industry. “At a time like this – says italpress –, with the criticalities related to the measures decided by the US administration, it is not the case” to proceed with this review. “If we want to maintain the power of the system and the jobs, we need to have an overview. From AIFA comes a technical proposal, politics takes note of it and, for the moment, decides not to do absolutely nothing”. Also for companies, the prospect of reducing prices is not sustainable because “in the current geopolitical scenario, characterized by a pressing and irreversible increase in production costs, companies do not have margins to adapt prices without compromising the continuity of supplies”, explains Egualia’s president, Riccardo Zagaria, according to which the weight of the revision of the prontuario “will entirely depend on patients”. The same concern was expressed by the president of Farmindustria, Marcello Cattani, who, in the last assembly of the association, had remembered that “farms that present different clinical profiles and that answer to the needs of different patients can not be considered comparable only to lower the cost for the SSN”. On the same occasion, the Minister of Health, Orazio Schillaci had opened the dialogue. “We will discuss it, especially in the interests of citizens. I don’t want them to have access to drugs” or “pay more”. This is because, with the review of the AIFA study, patients may undergo changes in the therapies, but also find themselves faced with the difficulty of accessing drugs that have so far been covered by the SSN. For the senator of Italy Viva Anna Maria Furlan, “when we talk about drugs we cannot download on citizens the costs of the system’s inefficiencies, nor transform the containment of expenditure in a reduction of the overalls. The first duty is not to compromise therapeutic continuity, the prescribed freedom of doctors and the right of patients to receive the most appropriate care.” The effect of the revision of the prontuary, adds the senator of the Pd Ylenia Z scope, “is not only accounting: the differential of price to the patient increases and a share of the cost now supported by the public system moves directly on the families”. “We cannot accept that the containment of health spending takes place at the expense of therapeutic continuity and access to care,” explains Zambiente, who asked Minister Schillaci on the subject.
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