The program of free medicines for children and 65+ will start no later than early 2024, but we are also thinking of a scenario from September 2023. We are looking for an analysis that shows that we can still afford these medicines this year – said minister of Public Health Adam Sunday.
Free medicines from September?
Health Minister Adam Niedzielski was asked in Polsat News on Sunday when the free medicine program will be extended to people aged 65+ and children and youth up to 18 years old. The program is currently aimed at people aged 75+.
We’re still in the decision making phase, it’s certainly from early 2024 at the latest, but we’re considering a scenario to introduce it a quarter earlier, which is from the end of September or from September 2023
said the health minister.
When asked why the rush, the minister replied:
First of all, we want to expand the list (…). We want to accelerate, because we have made such a cost analysis that shows that we can still fit in these medicines in terms of costs this year.
Reimbursed medicines
We currently have about 4,000. drugs (…) and so far the 75+ program contained about 2 thousand free drugs.
said Niedzielski. When asked how much this list will expand, he said: “The estimates we make are made in such a convention that it is a complete list of reimbursed drugs, meaning 4,100 items at the moment, so that all of these drugs are included in the list. program”.
The head of the Ministry of Health pointed out that the condition for inclusion of a drug in the list of reimbursed drugs is a very thorough analysis of the effectiveness of its use from a public health point of view, i.e. whether the state’s expenditure is proportionate with the clinical effects.
Only after this verification can we use public money for the refund
said Niedzielski.
Speaking about the free medicines program, the minister pointed out that “we are not talking about medicines that are simply available in pharmacies”.
We have reimbursed medicines from the prescription drug pool
he explained.
Why has the list been expanded to include children?
The minister was also asked why the list of people entitled to free medicines should be extended to children.
To be honest, we thought about which groups we should send this state aid to, because we have to say very openly that this is state aid. And on the one hand, we have seniors who have a big cost burden — this is the phenomenon of multimorbidity and a lot of chronic diseases that have to be paid for. So it made sense to support the group that uses it the most. On the other hand, when we talk about juniors, about children, the health reason is very simple: we want all children, regardless of their parent’s ability, to have access to controlled drug technologies (…)
he stressed.
Program UL PiS
The introduction of free medicines for people aged 65+ and children and young people up to the age of 18 was announced in mid-May by PiS President Jarosław Kaczyński at the “Programowy Street of Law and Justice” convention.
READ ALSO: Free medicines this year? Premier: We are considering introducing the program in September or October
olk/PAP
Source: wPolityce