(AGENPARL) - Rome, February 16 - Lobbies and corporations are at work in Parliament to neutralize the liberalizations of the Monti government. Timid liberalizations in the pharmaceutical sector because, while increasing the number of pharmacies, they place limits on the freedom of enterprise and continue to maintain the numerical planning of the offer. The medicines front is alarming, where against the obligation to inform patients about the existence of a generic drug and lower cost directly in the prescription, some trade union associations of doctors implement a "creeping" protest by writing on all the prescriptions, both in those with "designer" drugs and in those that prescribe alternative drugs, "NON REPLACEABLE".
This protest, in addition to causing economic damage to citizens who want the equivalent drug, forces them to make useless "pilgrimages" from pharmacy to pharmacy to find exactly the brand prescribed by the doctor. On the pharmacy front, there is a real tug of war between the owners' association and the government. The request, written between the lines of the amendments presented, as well as requesting an increase in the quorum to open a pharmacy which, in fact, would not change anything in the current legislative framework, purports to eliminate the obligation for the pharmacist to be present in parapharmacies. This in spite of the shameful campaign conducted in recent weeks aimed at making the population believe that the liberalization of class C drugs could create safety problems in the use of drugs. The cancellation of the presence of the pharmacist in the establishments created by the Bersani reform is an old cue of Federfarma which sees in the presence of colleagues the real vulnerability to the monopoly status of drug distribution. The Movimento Nazionale Free Pharmacists is asking consumer associations and public opinion to mobilize to prevent the whole chapter of liberalization relating to pharmacies from turning into a stalemate. The MNLF asks the government not to give in to the flattery of the corporations and, on the contrary, to relaunch the amendments that liberalize class C drugs as its own, rejecting all those amendments that aim to limit the number of pharmacies and reset the reforms approved in recent years.
