Magazzù's complaint (Fimmg): "More and more people are telling me, in 30 years of profession it had never happened to me"
PORDENONE. "Doctor, don't send me to the pharmacy because I don't have the money needed to pay for the medicines." That is when the crisis unloads on health. "In thirty years of profession, this had never happened to me", declares Rosario Magazzù, secretary of Fimmg, the largest union of general practitioners.
"It hadn't happened in other moments of economic crisis, and above all it is a request that comes not only from elderly people, who have difficulty making ends meet, but also from young people who have lost their jobs". The doctor's consideration in the face of this situation: "further difficulties cannot be created for citizens", or rather the problems of lost or non-existent work, one cannot add to the anguish of not being able to treat oneself adequately.
«I have always supported a principle: the doctor must prescribe in science and conscience and must prescribe drugs that he knows. When the ministry authorizes the introduction of medicines and inserts them in the formulary, it makes them prescription-only. And he knows exactly what their cost is. So why unload it on the shoulders of the citizens? Or, as happens, pressuring doctors to prescribe generics?
General practitioners «are doing everything possible to meet the needs of their clients - explains Magazzù -, we prescribe medicines with expired patents, because they cost less, and also the so-called generics. The problem is that there are many generics that contain a particular molecule, but it is not certain that they can be perfectly superimposed on the main drug. Therefore, the doctor has the duty to prescribe the drug he knows, because this pertains to science and conscience, and the pharmacist does not have the right to replace it. It is absurd for a doctor to be conditioned by the price of a medicine, just as it is serious for a patient to have to give up the most suitable medicine because he cannot afford to bear the higher cost required by a non-generic or non-patented medicine. Unfortunately - considers Magazzù - it happens, because the share charged to the citizen, equal to the difference between the price of the equivalent generic and the branded one, if we want to call it that, is modest in some cases, from 1 to 3 euros per box, but in others even reach 10 euros, and in this case the "bill" is objectively heavy».
