Donald Trump’s policy on drug prices is weakening access to innovative treatments in Switzerland: certain laboratories are refusing to market them in our country. Doctors can request their importation on a case-by-case basis, but reimbursement depends on the agreement of insurers. Solange Peters, head of the Department of Medical Oncology at CHUV, denounces decisions that are opaque and vary from one fund to another. She calls for common criteria to prevent patients from being treated differently depending on their insurance, reports 24 Hours.
The procedures can also take weeks. For immunotherapy against lung cancer, only 30% of reimbursement requests submitted by the professor were accepted. The three patients for whom reimbursement was ultimately obtained died before they could receive treatment. Solange Peters believes that Switzerland has the means to finance medicines that provide real benefit to patients and calls for this access to be made a political priority.
