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Berlin (German news agency) – Honorary President of the Medical Association Frank Ulrich Montgomery has sharply criticized the pharmaceutical industry for the serious shortage of medicines in Germany. “The pharmaceutical industry is making a very slim foot because it does not take overall responsibility for the treatment of patients,” said Montgomery in a podcast of the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” and the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland”.
The pharmaceutical industry must be persuaded to continue producing well-established, good drugs whose patent protection has expired, “even if they can no longer make big profits with them.” In addition, the drugs would have to be manufactured in Europe. “That will only work in a freely organized market economy system if you then pay them more money for it,” said Montgomery. “In my opinion, it has to come from state funds.”
That will be a tough debate because the pharmaceutical industry is not exactly one of the needy industries and earns a lot of money from the drugs. Although problems for individual children’s medicines have now been solved, the overall situation is still precarious. “Unfortunately I don’t see any light on the horizon yet. We haven’t fundamentally solved the problem. Within the chaos that we see in this government when it comes to health policy decisions, I’m not sure that we can bring about a solution by autumn.”