The deputies of the House agreed Thursday in plenary to abandon the savings of 48 million euros planned for the hospital sector.
The measure was included in a bill by Minister of Public Health Maggie De Block (Open Vld) aimed at achieving 96 million savings in the drug sector. Seven amendments were tabled and a consensus was reached to send the text back to committee, groom it and have it back in plenary next week.
Concretely, the measure will be beneficial for the patient. A certain number of old medicines will see the co-payment decrease for a total amount of 58 million euros.
Conversely, a saving measure of 48 million euros was to be carried by the hospital sector. This bill was already on the agenda of the plenary session of March 12 for entry into force on April 1. It had been withdrawn at the last minute at the request of the opposition, including the CDH, to precisely avoid the risk of bringing this saving measure of 48 million euros to the hospital sector, faced with the coronavirus crisis. “Rather than imposing a drop in the price of drugs directly on the pharmaceutical sector, the minister is cutting funding for hospitals by 48 million euros. Each hospital will have to manage to try to negotiate price reductions with the pharmaceutical sector. And too bad if they can’t!“, protested CDH MP Catherine Fonck.
At the end of the general discussion, Maggie De Block proposed to abandon this measure. “When it comes to hospitals, I think we are in another world now“she said in reference to the Covid-19 pandemic.”We have budgeted an additional billion directly into hospital accounts. There was still this saving measure for hospitals, we could drop it“.
A total of seven amendments were tabled on Thursday. On the proposal of Open Vld group leader Egbert Lachaert, a consensus emerged to send the text back to committee next week. It will be a question of adopting a global amendment allowing the groomed text to be voted in plenary next Thursday.
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