Posted Oct 18, 2022 4:46 PMUpdated on Oct 18, 2022 at 6:38 PM
Drug manufacturers and pharmacists have won a round. The government responded to their concerns by proposing to rewrite several measures provided for in the Social Security financing bill (PLFSS) for 2023 aimed at controlling drug spending.
“The government listened to us and heard us,” rejoices Philippe Besset, president of the Federation of Pharmaceutical Unions of France. Satisfaction is also on the side of the organization for the defense of drug companies, LEEM. “We take note of the government’s significant inflections”, declares its director general Philippe Lamoureux.
No more threat of strike by pharmacists
These inflections are found in amendments that the executive tabled on Monday, ahead of the discussion of the PLFSS which is due to start in public session Thursday in the Assembly. This rewrite was eagerly awaited by players in the pharmaceutical industry. Their outcry had been such on reading the PLFSS that the government had promised to correct its newly written copy.
To the great satisfaction of professionals, the government thus confirms that it is backtracking on the idea of setting up calls for tenders on medicines. The PLFSS wanted to save money by making it possible to reference a panel of drugs among those “having the same therapeutic aim” and to de-reimburse the others.
This prospect greatly worried laboratories and manufacturers of generic products, who criticized the government for going against the initiatives taken in the wake of the Covid crisis to support the pharmaceutical sector in France. It also alerted pharmacists who derive part of their income from discounts obtained on the sale of generics. Arguing that the state was going to create drug shortages with referrals, they were already planning to launch a strike.
This strike threat has now been lifted since the government is not even talking about experimenting with this referencing, as the Minister of Industry, Roland Lescure, had mentioned in early October. The amendment that the executive has tabled only commits it to submitting, by the summer of 2023, a report to Parliament on “the interest, feasibility and potential limits of a periodic referencing system”.
“We didn’t have to wait too long for common sense to prevail,” notes Stéphane Joly, president of Gemme representing generic manufacturers.
The sector still worried about the puncture of the State
The drug manufacturers have also won their case on another crucial subject in their eyes. That of the method of calculating the safeguard clause, the contribution supposed to preserve the finances of Social Security in the event of slippage in drug reimbursements. The government wanted to create a specific contribution to target high-growth drugs, and not to puncture uniformly as today the laboratories selling very expensive products and the manufacturers of generics.
However, his proposal was not to the liking of all drug manufacturers, especially the most innovative. As expected, the government waives the creation of a specific contribution and introduces a new formula for calculating the clause, taking into account up to 30% of the growth in the turnover of manufacturers. The generics pleaded for another distribution but “it is already a step forward”, welcomes Michael Bismuth, deputy general manager of Gemme.
However, manufacturers continue to worry about the drain represented by the safeguard clause. This could represent more than 2 billion euros in 2023 according to the LEEM in view of the current evolution of the market. “In reality, the safeguard clause is a tax on growth”, storms Philippe Lamoureux.
To lighten the bill, some are proposing to remove expenses related to Covid (vaccines) from the calculation of the safeguard clause. But Bercy excludes such a hypothesis.