According to Prime Minister Rutte, the Netherlands is one of the richest countries in the world. Then it is impossible to explain that there are such great shortages of medicines here.
The shortage of medicines is an increasing problem in the Netherlands. In modern times it has never even been as dire as it is now, CDA Member of Parliament Joba van den Berg complained to Health Minister Ernst Kuipers on Tuesday.
According to the CDA, but also many other parties in parliament, it is much worse in the Netherlands than in neighboring countries. This is said to be due to the policy of the health insurers, which have been squeezing the large pharmaceutical companies for years and forcing pharmacists and their wholesalers to prescribe the cheapest variant of many branded medicines.
The minister just didn’t seem to take the problem very seriously. First he boomed out a dutiful answer from a note, about the fact that there are shortages of raw materials everywhere in the world. He then stated that the many reports of shortages are not always real shortages, but that sometimes the medicine is just not available in the desired dose or the desired box.
But Kuipers flatly denied that there are greater shortages in the Netherlands than in the countries around us. This is difficult to place for many pharmacists and wholesalers, because all too often batches of medicines are for sale across the border. It is also not the experience of many doctors. The Dutch preferential policy of health insurers does indeed seem to play an important role.
There is something to be said for that policy. Pharmaceutical companies are among the most profitable in the world and the intermediate trade is also very profitable. All this ultimately comes at the expense of the care itself . But a limit now seems to have been reached.
According to Kuipers, this is a long-term problem that can only be tackled in a European context. That will have to be done more forcefully than now. Because there are more and more harrowing cases among patients. That is difficult to explain in a rich country like the Netherlands.