Seminar
Health Care and Pharmaceutical Reform in France: A Status Report by Claude Le Pen, Professor of Economics, Paris-Dauphine University - OHE Lunchtime Seminar.
- Date:
- 21 Jan 05
- Outline
- French policymakers typically view their system as a realistic compromise between Britain’s National Health Service, which they believe requires too much rationing and offers insufficient choice, and the mosaic of subsystems in the United States, which they consider socially...
- Full Description
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irresponsible because a significant part of the population has no health insurance. Yet it is not clear that the French have a sustainable health care model.
In this seminar Claude Le Pen – coauthor of the recent NEJM paper on Health Care Reform in France - discussed how the French health care system has moved from being ranked by the World Health Organization as the best in the world to finding itself in severe financial crisis, leading to the adoption of the Minister of Health Philippe Douste-Blazy’s radical reform plan in August 2004.
He outlined the reforms, designed to maintain patient choice of provider and the adoption of new technology albeit within a global budget system – which he has characterized as “the birth of state-led managed care”, i.e. the government using US managed care techniques in a universal coverage setting. He reviewed their potential impact, along with those announced earlier to introduce a more competitive pharmaceutical market with less direct price control, more use of generics and the delisting of low therapeutic value drugs.