Spain Central Government decided to Challenge Galicia’s drug catalogue
The Spanish Council of Minister, representing the Minister of Health, finally has decided to challenge in court the controversial decision about a
prioritised list of drugs, implemented by the autonomous community of Galicia, several local media reported. The decision came after the Minister of Health announced a period of investigation within her organisation, basically oriented to determine if the federal government or in this case, the Minister of Health, would have jurisdiction over the measure, considering that the decision was taken by a autonomous community. But in parallel, other autonomous communities, such as Andalucía, have expressed their interest in to move to a sort of similar policy, which could have accelerated the willingness of the MoH in terms to challenge in court the drug catalogue, in order to avoid a massive movement towards drug restriction.
MoH: Constitutional Trial
The decision of the federal government was announced in the beginning of the week and resolves the speculations during the past days, about whether the MoH would present legal actions against the measure or not. The Government has contested the Xunta of Galicia decision and presented a law suit in the Constitutional Trial, which is the entity which oversees that every law or public policy meets the fundamental rights in the country. According to the local media, there are no memories about such a confrontation in the health field. The Council of Ministers suggests that the drug catalogue is restricting the access of drugs in the Galician healthcare and therefore, establishing a discriminatory separation between the citizen of Galicia and the citizens in the rest of the country. In addition, after it assessment process, the MoH regards the pharmaceutical policy as a State policy, pointing out that autonomous communities are not entitled to restrict the offers of drugs, just for their population.
Industry and Government of Galicia reactions
The industrial association of pharmaceutical companies, Farmaindustria, has expressed its satisfaction with the decision of the Council of Ministers. In a press statement, the asociation pointed out that now the federal government is sharing the same thoughts expressed by several health stakeholders, regarding the drug catalogue as a “clear invasion of the State powers’ from the Autonomous Community of Galicia’ and “a violation of the current legislation”. They concluded that the catalogue “reduces Galician patients’ rights and undermines their equal access to available treatments and their right to access to medicines in terms of equality with citizens of other communities, breaking the cohesion of the National Health System and threatens the unity of Spain”. In addition, the Federation of Pharmaceutical Distributors (Fedifar), has coincided with Farmaindustria agreeing with the Government’s decision.
On the contrary, the Government of Galicia has expressed its concerns about the legal action in the Constitutional Trial. Furthermore, they have branded the decision as a “political” considering that there is no drug restriction at all from their point of view, because the catalogue includes all the active components of drugs that are distributed and reimbursed in a national level. According to their remarks, the main feature of the catalogue is to prioritise products which have the same active components, but are cheaper than the average. In addition, they said that with this measure the community of Galicia will lose the opportunity to save more than € 110 million (USD 150 million).
What’s going to happen?
Spain has been immersed in a tough campaign in order to bring down its health expenditure since the global economic crisis started. Indeed, amongst across the communities there was a 2.36% of reduction in the pharmaceutical bill during 2010, thanks to several measures such as the reduction in 30% of the prices of generics and 7.5% in the prices of branded drugs outside the reference price system. The argument of the Galician authorities is that they are addressing the same intention of the federal government, so there would be no reason to regard the catalogue as a controversial policy. However, according to the MoH, 427 drugs that are being already reimbursed by the National Health System are excluded from the catalogue of Galicia, which mean Spanish citizen from Galicia will not have access for these drugs through the public health system. This problem of equity, coupled with the fact that a measure such the catalogue could have deleterious impact in the consistency of the Spanish public healthcare across the communities, are enough reason for the Council of Ministers to present a complain to the Constitutional Trail. This court will have five months to rule whether the catalogue can continue or not. As long as the court declares admissible the legal resource, Galicia will have to stop its application.
