Information to the public on prescription medicines

BEUC and its member organisations strongly support the consumer right to access high quality and non promotional information about health, medicines and treatments. However we believe that the European Commission proposal is far from meeting patients’ and consumers’ needs and expectations, for the following reasons:

• It is based on an unworkable distinction between information and advertising;
• It doesn’t define an information strategy but just provides pharmaceutical companies greater flexibility to provide information on their products directly to the public;
• It will allow the industry to set the information agenda and choose on which medicines and on which diseases the information will be provided;
• It opens the door to disease mongering (art.88), allowing companies to make campaigns on any issue that they consider to be in the interest of public health;
• It increases inequalities in the provision of information between Member States;
• It will give rise to detrimental consequences, including a push towards high margin medicines, an unnecessary increase in health care costs, a bias against non-drug therapies and a pressure on the doctor/patient relationship;
• It is not based on a comprehensive assessment of consumers’ information needs, and on a thorough analysis of the benefits and risks of a change in the legislation;
• The proposed monitoring system is extremely weak, costly and inefficient;
• The proposed enforcement measures are contradictory and increase legal uncertainty especially with regard to liability issues.

We call for the Commission and the Member States to develop a comprehensive health information strategy that:

1. Puts health interests first;
2. Relies on and promotes good and independent sources of information;
3. Enables consumers to make informed choices;
4. Truly addresses inequalities in the access to health information.