Non-reimbursed drug sales "collapse" in France

Sales of non-reimbursed drugs have crashed in France, since a new cluster of products was removed from Social Security coverage. Although as a share of medicines consumption, the affected items only represent 3% of the total, the drop of 53% in dispensed volume in only the first two months of the current year is dramatic.

Gilles Bonnefond, general secretary of the retail pharmacists labor union (USPO), told the daily financial newspaper, Les Echos: "the fall will not stop there. If one trusts the evidence of previous waves of de-reimbursement, one can expect a 70% fall, then a stabilization at that level."

The two most affected drug classes are vasodilators and cough remedies. Frederic Champavere, president of locally-based drugmaker Negma-Lerads, which markets Veinamitol (troxerutine), described the problem for companies hit by the government's refusal to reimburse a drug. "The French patient is used to not paying," he said.