An alliance for promoting pharmaceutical policy reform, consisting of specialists, academics, 15 drug-related associations and eight university departments, was established in Taipei yesterday.
“The government allocates insufficient resources for medical sectors and lacks inter-departmental policies and measures for industry guidance. Unreasonable medical and pharmaceutical resource allocation and drug price adjustment leads to a lack of drugs,” the alliance said in a statement.
The alliance said long-term problems include overly low drug prices, an insufficient supply of drugs, slow payment by the National Health Insurance for new drugs and an overly low proportion of resources allocated for medical sectors.
“We hope to increase the government’s public medical expenditure,” alliance spokesperson Wu Li-ren (吳力人) said, adding that government health expenditure accounts for 6.6 percent in Taiwan, compared with 16 percent in the US, 10.3 percent in Japan and 7.8 percent in South Korea.
Meetings on issues such as how to stabilize drug supplies, improve drug quality and safety, and introduce a more reasonable resource allocation scheme are to be held regularly to find solutions, and a pharmaceutical white paper is to be released annually, the alliance said.
About 200 people yesterday attended the inaugural meeting, and representatives from political parties were also invited, including former minister of health Yang Chih-liang (楊志良), former deputy minister of health Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) and People First Party Vice Chairman Chang Chao-hsiung (張昭雄).
Yang said the National Health Insurance Administration should stop investigating drug prices — because there is clear evidence that already shows prices are too low — and start sending specialists to pharmaceutical factories to help improve drug quality.
Chen said the alliance can serve as a unified platform between drug companies and academics, to forge collective suggestions for pharmaceutical policies.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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