German-style drug reference pricing is a "bureaucratization" of medicine use

Doctors, dentists, pharmacists and other health care workers in Germany have been strongly protesting against the new cost-containment health care reform (Marketletters passim). "This reform will simply lead the health care system into the cul-de-sac of centralized bureaucracy," according to their last joint statement during the national strike on December 4.

"The main effects of reference pricing are very similar: it ends up with a bureaucratization of the use of medication for German patients while they remain trapped to in, and contributing to, a mandatory health insurance system," declares Valentin Petkantchin, the author of a report on the issue.

The new study, from the Brussels, Belgium-based Institut economique Molinari and the Center for the New Europe, concludes that current reference pricing policy - along with possible savings through compulsory sickness funds in the use of pharmaceuticals - may therefore present several possible drawbacks for patients and insured people.