by Freedom advances less than announced. Limits emerge, or corrections along the way, depending on how you prefer to interpret them. This is clear from the regulations of a series of articles of the mega health chapter DNU by Javier Milei. A little more than a month after the signing of that document, the specific scope was defined.
Firstly, a neuralgic change introduced by the decree of necessity and urgency is reversed: the way in which remedy recipes. Furthermore, it limits both the sale of over-the-counter medications outside pharmacies such as the possibility for drugstores to sell medicines directly to the public.
The regulations introduce “clarifications,” said the Ministry of Health. Regarding the prescription of medications, it will finally be possible to continue suggesting business names in the recipes. Article 266 of the DNU had been the most controversial, with questions from professional associations of doctors, in tandem with laboratories, due to the fact that this attribution was prohibited to them.
Somehow, they had slipped into the health portfolio, as he learned Clarion A few days ago, the conversations were open to adjust the points of discord that the decree triggered. Both the pharmaceutical industry and medical associations considered it detrimental to patient treatments if the suggestion of a trademark was no longer possible.
In the middle of the discussion, even the medical representatives had raised their voices to warn that this measure also put their sources of work at risk. But at the end of the historic promotion mechanism in which these official agents of intermediaries between laboratories and doctors will continue to enjoy good health.
The Ministry led by Mario Russo had been arguing that removing any suggestion of a commercial brand from the prescription gave greater freedom to patients in the act of choosing, with the advice of the pharmacist, the most convenient brand for each pocket.
However, criticism arose from the medical sector and a good part of the laboratories based on the fact that in Argentina there is no bioequivalence procedure, essential for the existence of a generic market. And therefore it becomes unverifiable that one medication is strictly the same as another even if it contains the same drug.
Although in the midst of this debate Health had assured that this issue – the safe replacement between brands – was settled by the guiding criterion that all medicines are approved by the ANMAT, now the DNU regulations give in to the claim of the pharmaceutical industry and health professionals.
With a salvation that, strictly speaking, puts things in the place they were before the decree: “In cases where the professional submits the suggestion of a name or trademark, the pharmaceutical professional, at the request of the consumer, will have the Obligation of replace it with a lower priced medicinal specialty that contains the same active ingredients, concentration, pharmaceutical form and similar number of units as that prescribed.”
But the idea is that, in any case, the doctor continues to have control of the chain, based on the following official clarification: “The electronic prescription system must return the information to the activating professional, in case of substitution in the pharmacy to preserve “adequate monitoring of the patient’s clinical treatment.”
Was there pressure from laboratories to continue suggesting a commercial brand in recipes? The Government does not see it that way. They explained to Clarion that “the conversations with the sectors were taken into account with the aim of advancing the application and also the possibility of regulation allowed us to contemplate aspects that were not in the first draft and that improve it.”
Despite the reversal on that point, the Ministry insisted that “the pharmacist, duly authorized by the competent authority, is the only one responsible and qualified for the proper dispensation of medicinal specialties that require prescriptions, as well as for their substitution.” .
The second important change in the DNU regulations refers to the possibility that it originally opened that over-the-counter medications could be sold outside of pharmacies, that is, in stores in other areas. Now that freedom was limited only to antacids and painkillers.
A certain weakness of the initial proposal was presumed in the fact that the Chamber of Over-the-Counter Medicines had advanced Clarionstrikingly, they had no intentions – at least in the immediate future – of distributing these drugs in places other than pharmacies.
From now on, any business that wants to sell antacids and painkillers must comply with a series of obligations, among which are an insurance policy, special storage spaces and the prohibition of splitting containers.
Finally, the other important point that the DNU regulations address is the authorization for the drugstores -who distribute the remedies in pharmacies- sell medicines directly to the public. Now that alternative was strictly limited to recipes in which they are prescribed. oncological medications or for special treatments listed by the enforcement authority. The rest of the remedies are excluded.
The regulations thus cover, in this first stage, articles 266, 310, 313 and 323 of the mega presidential DNU, related to the method of prescribing medicines and their marketing. In the near future there could be more news: “The other health points of the decree – they said in the Ministry – will be included in new regulations.”
