FRENCH MINISTERS LOOK AT GENERICS

Lower receipts are pushing France's social security regime deeper into deficit, despite a marked slowdown in health care spending in the first four months of 1994. The social security accounts commission is expected to forecast a deficit of 55 billion French francs ($980 million) for 1994, upwardly revising the forecast it made last December.

News of the rising deficit comes as Prime Minister Edouard Balladur is trying to convince the financial markets that deficits are being contained. The latest ministers' meeting noted that reimbursement of medical treatment fees and drug prescriptions has slowed notably since the start of 1994, but the government is currently exploring the use of generics and a plan to base reimbursement on the cheapest drug in any given therapeutic category.

Social Affairs Minister Simone Veil has asked officials for a report on the issue, which the government realizes is extremely complex, say sources in her department. The development of generic prescribing assumes the implicit agreement of doctors, who need to be convinced, pharmacists, who would need the right to substitute one drug for another (which the doctors contest), and of the funds and the drug industry; the government already has a framework agreement with the latter.