France HAS: "scrap and replace" payer system

France's health care watchdog body, the HAS, has denounced current arrangements for the full reimbursement of treatment in serious and chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes as "unreformable" by administrative or management changes. Instead, in a new report, the HAS argues that the current system needs scrapping and rapid replacement. The study is based on a review of reimbursement arrangements for 20 diseases. Overall, the full reimbursement regime for chronic conditions covers about eight million patients and accounts for three quarters of the total cost of reimbursable health spending.

The HAS is calling for the medical nature of any given condition to be eliminated from the criteria used for setting the reimbursement level. A new system should be based on "an objective measure of costs supported by the patient," the watchdog said.