Warsaw (Puls Biznesu) – The law which was supposed to protect patients, protects lobbyist groups.
Transparency International (TI) criticizes changes planned to be implemented in the pharmaceutical law. The rules will encourage corruption, are against the current law and instead of protecting patients, they will adversely affect them. TI evaluated three projects: big amendment (the Parliament is ending works over it), small amendment and an amendment concerning health services (the two are still being prepared by the government).
As far as the big amendment is concerned, it introduces a ban to advertise drugstores although the parties concerned were not consulted at this point. Malgorzata Stryjska, PiS MP, denies.
“We worked transparently. The proposal to ban the advertising of drugstores was consulted. We sent out 120 invitations to all groups interested in this issue”, the MP explained.
“It’s hard to see any other explanation for this ban than to protect the economic interest of drugstore owners”, TI evaluated.
“This ban limits the patient’s law to be informed. The obligation to use one margin by drugstores and wholesalers will result in price increase. When the number of drugstores is limited, the access to medicines will be smaller”, Stanislaw Mackowiak, CEO of the Federation of Polish Patients enumerated.
During Parliamentary proceedings, MPs cut out the provision allowing for selling medicines without prescription while buying in the internet from the government bill.
“And they did it despite the fact that virtual drugstores have 10-30 percent lower prices than traditional ones”, Mr. Mackowiak added.
The government wanted to ban the advertising of refunded medicines only. It was the MPs who changed it into the ban of drugstores’ advertisement in general.