The debate on the contribution of the private health sector to society, the national economy and entrepreneurship is an excellent occasion not so much to record the multiple benefits coming from this contribution, but mainly to start a meaningful dialogue around its limits, i.e. around the required balance between the private and public sectors in health in order for our healthcare system to become sustainable.
PhARMA Innovation Forum Greece (PIF) and its member companies have repeatedly emphasized the indisputable positive impact of pharmaceutical innovation on people’s lives, which is reflected in the increase in life expectancy, the elimination of diseases, but also in the therapeutic leaps achieved in a number of therapeutic categories. Equally typical is the case of the covid-19 pandemic, where the innovative pharmaceutical industry responded in record time, offering safe and effective vaccines to address the health crisis.
The effects of innovation on the improvement of healthcare systems (decrease in mortality, reduction of the need for hospitalisation, treatment of chronic diseases) but also on the economy (jobs, investments, clinical studies) are similar. At the same time, a number of Corporate Responsibility programs that have been implemented consistently over many years, in areas such as education, the environment and sustainable development, are expanding the footprint of the private sector in the Health ecosystem.
Everything described above, however, is put in substantial jeopardy by the fact that the State persists in a combination of underfunding of Health and excessive inflation of mandatory refunds, which undermine the perspective and sustainability of our Healthcare system.
The automatic refund mechanism is no longer a cost control tool, as it was originally legislated, but has turned into a financing mechanism for the healthcare and pharmaceutical system. Without the contribution of the industry which reached €2 billion in 2022 (if we include clawback and volume refunds or rebates) patients would not be able to access the innovative treatments they need.
This distortion in some cases reaches the point where 7/10 drugs are essentially offered free of charge by pharmaceutical companies. At the same time, the State does not adopt and fully implement structural reforms, which would lead to more rational and viable consumption, because it can simply shift the cost of healthcare to pharmaceutical companies and patients.
If the complete lack of predictability is added to the above, then we have a situation that obviously cannot go on without negative consequences for patients’ access to innovation in our country and for the sustainability of the healthcare system in general.
Behind these pathologies lies a fundamental absolute prioritization of limiting expenditure in every way and a narrowly financial approach to Health as a “cost center”. However, Health cannot be treated as a “cost center” because it is a public good. Emphasis must be placed on this point and we will insist on it, always within the framework of the institutional dialogue, in order to achieve the widest possible consensus and lay the foundations for a sustainable Healthcare System focused on patient access to the most appropriate and best treatments.
*The article was originally posted at: insider.gr
