Also due to liposuction injections: drug costs reach new record high in Switzerland

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Swiss people spent 8.5 billion francs on medicines in 2022 at the expense of basic insurance. This is 4.4 percent more than the previous year and represents a new all-time record. This emerges from the new drug report from health insurance company Helsana.

Drug costs have increased nearly 50 percent in the last decade. According to Helsana, one in four premium francs goes to medicine. The issue is also quite stark, given the ever-increasing health insurance premiums.

Cancer, diabetes and ADHD as cost drivers

Cancer drugs account for a particularly large share of costs: 30 percent of the total cost of drugs goes to cancer and immune system drugs. And this is despite the fact that related drugs do not represent even 2 percent of all drug intake.

A new migraine prophylactic drug, increased treatment for ADHD in adults and new types of diabetes medications also contributed to the cost increase last year. These include fat removal injections from the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which has been experiencing real excitement especially in recent months. Helsana writes that “widespread diabetes” alone led to an increase in costs of 50 million francs.

However, the pharmaceutical report notes a decline in the costs of drugs to treat HIV: Antiretroviral treatments now cost 14,300 francs per HIV patient. Five years ago the same treatment cost 4000 francs more.

Pharmaceutical industry denies responsibility

Insurance company harshly criticizes pharmaceutical industry with drug report: Manuel Elmiger, health economist and the person responsible for the drug report at Helsana, criticizes that new drugs are often expensive and not always better than the previous ones: “Public opinion
“We can be sure that excessive prices will not be paid for medicines, especially fake innovations.”

While the pharmaceutical industry criticizes drug prices, it points out that it does not determine the prices alone: ​​Every year, the Federal Public Health Agency (BAG) controls the prices of one third of the drugs covered by basic insurance. BAG makes international price comparisons for this purpose.

As announced in its last review at the beginning of November, BAG reduced the prices of 350 drugs by an average of 10 percent. BAG hopes this will result in savings of 120 million francs. It is not yet clear whether this will be successful: some approval holders have announced that they have filed complaints against the price reductions.

Source :Blick