Hospital.Help

Berlin – CDU leader Friedrich Merz wants to strengthen the pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare system through social reforms and a reduction in tax burdens and bureaucracy. Europe must reduce its dependence on fragile supply chains, he explained at the general meeting of the Federal Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry (BPI) in Berlin.

There is no sector of the German economy that has such growth potential and is growing as quickly as the healthcare industry. “We have an interest in remaining a strong pharmaceutical location – and I hesitate to stick to the word,” explained Merz.

The German pharmaceutical industry has lost quality and innovative strength in recent years. “The demonization of biotechnology and genetic engineering was the beginning of the decline of this part of the pharmaceutical industry,” he said. “We still haven’t recovered from that.”

Given the global strategic situation, it is also unacceptable that Germany and Europe are now dependent on international supply chains to ensure the basic supply of medicines. “If there is still a single penicillin manufacturer in Austria in Europe that is about to be taken over by a Chinese investor, that must be a warning signal.”

He spoke out against relying solely on subsidies to bring production and research back into the country. The 2.5 billion euros that the public sector spent to promote Eli Lily’s work in Alzey would correspond to the outflow of capital from Germany in a single week. In 2022, a new negative record was set with a net capital outflow of 115 billion euros from Germany.

In order to bring about a turnaround, the location must be made attractive again. Labor costs in Germany are significantly too high. He doesn’t mean wages, but above all the additional wage costs. “We cannot avoid reforming our social systems,” he emphasized. The healthcare system is “the biggest socio-political construction site in the next few years”.

He once again made clear his rejection of citizens’ money, which creates false incentives and encourages people to stop working because it would no longer be financially profitable for them. That has to change.

In addition, the issue of bureaucracy must finally be addressed. “The complexity costs for companies have increased immeasurably,” he warned. The EU in particular plays an inglorious role in this. In the future, it will have to concentrate more on big questions such as foreign and security policy instead of on small-scale regulation.

In addition, Germany regularly exceeds European requirements. After a possible change of government next year, he wants to ensure that EU requirements are implemented one-to-one in the future and that unnecessary regulations that are based on EU requirements but are not necessary under EU law are eliminated. He has already commissioned us to determine where this is possible.

Energy costs and tax burdens are also too high. He wants to reduce the corporate tax burden to 25 percent and introduce a uniform corporate tax regardless of the legal form.

The macroeconomic conditions must be created to promote medical innovations again. This includes strengthening patent law as an economic guarantee for innovations. But what is also needed is the necessary socio-political climate that no longer despises entrepreneurship, as well as the infrastructure necessary for research and development.

“If a company like Biontech moves its research department to Great Britain because no research is possible in the EU, you have to ask yourself why that is,” he said. It must be easier to use anonymized data generated during the treatment of patients for research in the pharmaceutical industry.

BPI chairman Oliver Kirst, in turn, criticized the lack of reimbursement as the main cause of the decline of the pharmaceutical industry. There are supply bottlenecks “because medicines are viewed purely as a cost factor,” he said. The discount contract tenders of the statutory health insurance companies – especially those with only one surcharge – are largely responsible for the fact that hardly any pharmaceutical production is based in Europe anymore.

Because if only one manufacturer wins the contract, all other manufacturers would know that they would not be able to make any profits with that same product in the coming years and would shut down their respective production.

Rebuilding it would be a lengthy process and not an economically viable option under these circumstances. There is therefore a need for at least tenders with several awards, in which several active ingredient producers are also specified. © lau/aerzteblatt.de