French health plan "to save 62 billion francs"

Gilles Johanet, director of the French health fund organization CNAM,has presented to the government a new and radical plan to put the health service "on a new track" and save an estimated 62 billion French francs ($10.28 billion: Marketletter March 15). The plan was announced as a new surge in health spending was confirmed, with January's level up 1.9% over January 1998 and spending growth in general medical care, excluding the hospital sector, reaching 2.8%.

The plan contains 22 measures which amount, says CNAM president Jean-Marie Spaeth, to "a global vision." They include a new drug reimbursement system, under which drugs would be reimbursed in each category under an alignment basis, ie on the lowest prices in the market. Currently, the same active agent is reimbursed at different rates, depending on its brand name. The new system would start with generics and then apply across the board within two or three years to all drugs, apart from innovative products.

The plan would also partially or totally eliminate reimbursement of homeopathic drugs, on which a small but significant sector of the industry in France depends, and peripheral vasodilators. The total savings in the drugs sector would be some 10 billion francs.