CNAM Tightens Grip On French Rxing

Jean-Marie Spaeth, the new president of France's major health fund, the CNAM, has hardened his stance over medical treatment and prescription spending in talks with the main French doctors' groups, following new figures showing a 6.1% rise in drug spending and treatment fees in the first five months of 1996.

CNAM sources say that with an annual spending growth target of 2.1%, the rise gives cause for concern. Mr Spaeth said that "if we do not arrive at a solution (over spending), it will be necessary to employ more coercive measures." He referred to treatments by doctors that "nothing can justify," and said they had to do with a profession which, on the basis of collective financing and fees, "has the means to finance its own remuneration."

Later, the doctors met Social Affairs Minister Jacques Barrot, who expressed alarm at the 6.1% spending rise and reminded them of the government's 1996 target. A major effort to control spending is required from them if fees are to be reviewed in 1997 and treatment regimes of specialists revamped, he said, and urged individual doctors to exercise responsibility.