Speaking on Radio Uno, the Minister of Health underlined how the rule contained in the spending review "holds together the doctor's freedom of science and conscience, the patient's interest in having an equivalent drug at a lower price, and the interest of the system to obtain savings”.
22 AUG – “The law says that the doctor must always indicate the active ingredient. If, on the other hand, he believes that there are reasons connected to the patient's history of illness or other reasons that he has evaluated in the course of his experience as a doctor, then he can explicitly motivate him and make the drug with the commercial name mandatory. Actually the doctor can in all cases indicate the trade name as guidance. In this case, patients are free to buy the equivalent or ask for the brand name drug at a higher price, on which, however, they will have to pay the difference”. The Minister of Health Renato Balduzzi, speaking on the microphones of the Prima di tutto broadcast on Radio Uno, thus returned to defending the rule contained in the spending review which introduced the medical prescription of drugs by active ingredient.
According to Balduzzi, in fact, the law was tailored specifically to respect all the components that revolve around the prescription of drugs: "It holds together three important moments: the freedom of science and the doctor's conscience, the patient's interest in having an equivalent drug and not paying a difference for a branded drug, and the interest of the system, because in the medium term the price of equivalents will drop and the health service will be able to divert the scarce resources we have towards other directions, for example innovative drugs" .
With reference in particular to the position taken by the trade union organizations of family doctors who feared the risk of confusion for patients, Balduzzi reassured: “I believe that all the innovations involve some initial problems of adaptation. But I also believe that Italian doctors are able to guide their patients and that all of this, as has already happened in other countries of the world which for a long time have opened the way to equivalent medicines without particular contraindications, will eventually produce a greater health culture as well as an advantage for citizens' pockets and, in the meantime, also for the Nazi Health Service
