Israel: Updating The Drug Basket, Funding Innovation

10 February 1997

Israel's General Sick Fund has excluded Bayer's antidiabetes drugPrandase (acarbose: marketed in Israel by Agis) from its formulary. GSF patients who need the drug must pay NIS150-NIS180 ($45.31-$54.37) per month for it in the private pharmacy market. The other three smaller funds have not restricted its use.

Prandase was registered by the Ministry of Health over a year ago for non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus in patients inadequately controlled by diet alone, or on diet and oral hypoglycemic agents, affecting about 90-100,000 patients. Yoram Kantor, scientific editor of a newsletter for diabeticians, says the GSF is excluding the drug "for political and economic reasons. In the market there are no drugs of the same type. If the patient does not use this drug, he has to use older alternatives which do not meet all the clinical requirements and sometimes cause side effects."

The GSF says that as the MoH has not included Prandase in the basket of pharmaceutical benefits defined by the National Health Insurance, it has asked for an extra NIS30 million to provide the drug. So far, the MoH has refused this request.

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