French Controls On Medical Spending

Over the past two or three years the pharmaceutical industry and the French government have had to adapt to two strong and long-lasting effects, according to Bernard Mesure, president of the French pharmaceutical industry association, SNIP.

These are the accelerated concentration of the drug industry worldwide, which has lead to drastic rationalization and increased competition, and the degradation of state funding as a result of the limited capacity of prescription reimbursement, Mr Mesure told a meeting in Paris to discuss medicines and the drug industry in 1995.

The SNIP president said that the policy of control on pharmaceutical expenditures which is being adopted by the government and the industry (Marketletters passim) is a joint response in order to preserve quality of care, faced with the successive failures of the accounting system which has brought the French social security system into question, weakened capacity for research and seriously affected the industry's competitiveness.