30/07/2012
With the approach also confirmed with the maxi-amendment to the spending review decree, demagoguery and anti-industrial ideology won. This is the country where nightly blitzes are carried out, on the shoulders of workers and businesses, forcing then to make changes on the run, in the direction of downward compromises, without having evaluated the impacts and consequences of these measures. Whoever has chosen to prescribe the active ingredient will have to assume responsibility for the effects of a discriminatory rule for industry, which does not bring savings to the State - and therefore is not from the point of view of the spending review - and creates a market protected. Furthermore, the reason for depriving the doctor of the prescribing choice is not understood. Since July of last year, in 12 months, the pharmaceutical sector has been the subject of legislative provisions that have changed the reference framework 3 times. Some of these have had heavy economic effects on the pharmaceutical industries. Italy is going through a delicate historical moment, it needs to maintain what it has and to develop new economic opportunities. And not of signs that depress the chances of recovery, they put the survival of the pharmaceutical industry at risk with consequences for existing and future investments in research and production. From a production point of view, the combination of the hypothesized measures included in the spending review decree causes irreparable damage in terms of investments and employment with serious effects on the country's economy because the economic balance of the maneuver is certainly negative.
Statements by President Massimo Scaccabarozzi on the spending review
28/07/2012
"In the middle of the night, an amendment was approved by the Senate Budget Commission which introduces a drastic, unprecedented measure which deprives the doctor of the choice of drug - with only the prescription of the active ingredient - and which strikes at the heart of the industry pharmaceuticals in Italy. It was added to a heavy cut in territorial spending envisaged in the spending review which will prove to be unsustainable. A measure which has nothing to do with the spending review. And which would create a protected market for unbranded products , producing an unacceptable discrimination and distortion of fair competition, in contrast with the need to support innovation and industrial development.It is a decision that makes no sense as the 90% of the dispensed packs and products has an expired patent and it does not generate any advantage for the State, which already bears only the cost of the medicine at a lower price, nor for the citizen who can choose the latter on the mandatory recommendation of the doctor and pharmacist on the basis of current legislation. Moreover, in a system in which the prices of medicines are the lowest in Europe, as also recognized by the European Parliament, and access to innovation has been heavily penalized for some time.
