Pine Di Blasio
ROME
FIRST the cry of alarm from the unions, the Regions and the doctors about the "new, very heavy blow" that hits health care, with further cuts in funding for the health service. Then the double knockout in the Social Affairs Commission, which deleted a couple of paragraphs on drugs, the rules on "off-label" medicines and on "unpacking" in hospital pharmacies. In between, Farmindustria's battle against mandatory recipes with the active ingredient, culminating in the announcements of 10,000 redundancies in companies, a thousand in the Menarini group alone.
FOR THE MINISTER OF HEALTH Renato Balduzzi yesterday was a day to forget. Another cut was included in the stability law on the expenditure for the purchase of goods and services and medical devices by healthcare companies and hospitals, an initial cut of one billion euros, with the ax on tender and supply. Maneuver that aroused the doubts of the minister himself. Balduzzi communicated yesterday evening that the expected cut will be 600 million for 2013. The council of ministers has decided to review only the purchases of non-health goods and services, reducing the impact of the measure on medical devices. Initially hypotheses of reductions of up to one and a half billion had been circulated». But the announcement of the measures had already ignited the dust. "Instead of fighting waste and useless expenses - shouts Vera Lamonica, confederal secretary of the CGIL - linear cuts are decided on goods and services, which put supplier companies in crisis, and therefore wages and jobs". "With these continuous cuts - is the thesis of Angelo Testa, national president of Snami, the union of general practitioners - the attempt to reform the territorial assistance of the Balduzzi decree becomes absurd".
THE heaviest broadside came from the Conference of the Regions, "very worried - according to the statement by the president, Vasco Errani - by the fact that on health, education and social services there are maneuvers that produce cuts of many billions".
THE FRONT of the protest is intertwined with the Ministry of Economic Development, especially on the pharmaceutical issue. The two paragraphs of the Balduzzi decree, canceled yesterday in the Social Affairs commission by an amendment proposed by Laura Ravetto, change the rules on the use of off-label drugs (medicines that could also be used for indications other than those authorized) and on the possibility for hospital pharmacies to "unpack" the drug packages and dose them inside the facility. «Those regulations on medicines - Minister Balduzzi declared after the vote - were aimed at achieving the best possible balance between the needs of industry and those of health. They didn't want to penalize the industry, but to give more certainty about deadlines and patent protection». The industries of the sector, on the other hand, persist in their battle against prescriptions with generic drugs which have drastically reduced turnover.
