After more than five months of investigation and 54 hearings of health professionals, patient associations or representatives of the sector, the Senate committee delivers this July 6 a severe report on the “bankruptcy” of the drug policy in France. The senators also present 36 specific recommendations to end the shortages.
The senators first note a “clear worsening” of the situation since 2018. France has thus gone from 700 reports of stockouts in 2018 to more than 3,700 last winter. This figure, unprecedented in its magnitude, is the result of a lack of anticipation by both the public authorities and the industrialists of the triple winter epidemic of Covid, influenza and bronchiolitis.
For a long time, the rise in drug prices has been presented by manufacturers as a prerequisite for building up stocks on a competitive international market. The senators are not saying no, but they want guarantees. “Despite their obligation to ensure market supply, laboratories are losing interest in mature products in favor of innovative drugs, the prices of which are experiencing a frightening increase”, underlines Sonia de La Provôté.
The report proposes making future price increases “a tool for securing supply”. In other words, if the price of certain mature drugs were to increase, manufacturers would have a real obligation to stock up and prevent all forms of shortages.
The report also returns to the list of some 450 so-called essential drugs unveiled by François Braun, the Minister of Health, in June. This list, expected for years, was to identify in particular the products for which it is imperative to stock up, and those whose production should be relocated to France. If the senators do not fail to recognize the potential interest of such a list, they underline that “its method of elaboration has aroused the strongest criticism from certain learned societies” and that the “Haute Autorité de santé n was not requested”.
In addition, the rapporteur wishes to alert to the fact that “French manufacturers plan in the coming months and years to abandon the production of nearly 700 drugs, including drugs of major therapeutic interest”, therefore potentially present in the list of the minister.
Among the key proposals of the report, one of them points to the need to require compensation in exchange for the many tax incentives enjoyed by laboratories in France. The pharmaceutical sector is, for example, the second beneficiary of the research tax credit (10% of the total amount, or 710 million euros). The effort, deemed “colossal” by the senators, “did not prevent relocations, nor did it succeed in anchoring the production of innovative drugs in France”. The commission’s investigation of the Directorate General of Public Finances even revealed “highly questionable” CIR optimization practices.
Finally, the senators denounce the low impact of the projects financed by the “France 2030” recovery plan, widely presented by the government as a response to shortages. Out of 106 projects included in this plan, “only 18 concerned a real relocation” and “5 concerned a strategic drug”, analyze the elected officials.
