Joint letters with like-minded organisations are never easy to write, even among friends. Each organisation wants to add its own nuance.Different organisations may have different rules for sign-off on final drafts, and amendments can ping-pong from one to the other. I’ve been there.
Sometimes, however, an issue is so important and clear that a joint position is agreed and action taken in a very short time – as in the case of the 30 health-care organisations that have written to Mr Juncker to oppose the proposal to transfer responsibility for medicines, medical devices and health technology from DG Sanco to DG Enterprise.
And not just any organisations: the signatories include the European representative associations of national organisations of doctors, pharmacists, hospital physicians, hospital pharmacists, health mutuals and health insurance funds, hospital associations, social security funds, cancer leagues, heart foundations, medical bulletins, patients, the elderly, consumers and many others. Offhand, I cannot think of any major European healthcare representative voice that has not signed up – well, the pharmaceutical industry, perhaps, but they have their own agenda.
The editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal, Fiona Godlee, has also written a joint letter with the review Prescrire, in the same sense.
I don’t think I have ever seen such a wide and immediate agreement between such a diverse range of professionals, patients and consumers on one issue. This is the united voice of the European healthcare sector. Will Mr Juncker listen?
The decision to make the transfer from health to the industry DG seems to have been at the demand of the European pharmaceutical industry. According to an article in Scrip on 12th September:
EFPIA said that commission president-elect Jean-Claude Juncker had “taken on our views and put together all units that are relevant for our business in Europe”. These, it said, were previously spread over three directorates general, SANCO (health), MARKT (internal market) and ENTR.
So now we know. We have the industry on one side on this issue and on the other side the entire health care sector – doctors, pharmacists, patients, hospitals, mutualities, sickness and social security funds, consumers etc. The industry claims to play an important role in healthcare and indeed it does but that role is not always positive. END