The Minister for Public Accounts, Thomas Cazenave, calls on doctors to prescribe less medication and the French to consume less, while “nearly 4,000 medications” are out of stock or at risk of being out of stock.
The Union of Community Pharmacists’ Unions launched the alert on Friday October 27: “nearly 4,000 medications” are out of stock or at risk of being out of stock at the end of October. In this context, and after the adoption of the revenue section of the social security financing bill via 49.3 in the National Assembly, the Minister for Public Accounts considered that it was necessary “prescribe better and sometimes fewer medications”. On France Inter, Thomas Cazenave affirmed that “the French are among the biggest consumers of medicines in the world”. True or false ?
Eighth country to consume the most medicines
By consumption, we must actually mean expenses to buy medicines, because it is only possible to know how much the French and Social Security spend to buy medicines. However, it is impossible to know whether the French really consume the tablets and syrups they pick up from the pharmacy.
If we compare countries according to their spending on purchasing medicines, in fact, France is at the top of the ranking. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), France was the eighth country to buy the most medicines in 2021 with 765 US dollars per year per person, or 725 euros. The vast majority of these are prescription medications.
This is one of the highest scores but it is still half as much as in the United States ($1,432), much less than in Germany, the leading consumer in Europe ($1,042), and still less than Malta (947), Canada (914), Japan (835), Korea (803) and Switzerland (803).
France falls in the ranking
However, it is important to point out that France tends to move down in this ranking. 20 years ago, it was the second country with the highest consumption of medicines per capita per year, behind the United States. She was therefore also the largest consumer in Europe.
However, the consumption of medicines has increased significantly in France over the last two decades. It was 606 dollars per year per capita in 2003, or around 160 dollars less, according to the OECD. But France still fell in the ranking because spending increased even faster in other countries: it doubled in the United States, going from 728 to 1,432 dollars, more than doubled in Germany, going from 436 to 1 042 dollars and almost doubled in Canada from 507 to 914 dollars. Germans and Canadians therefore notably passed in front of the French.
Even lower in the ranking, according to two other indicators
At least two other indicators also make it possible to compare the consumption of medicines in France with that of other countries and to further qualify this first classification.
The purchase of medicines, prescribed or not, represented 1.5% of French GDP in 2021, according to the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees), the statistics service of the Ministry of Health. Health. From this point of view, France ranks not in eighth but in 16th place among the countries which consume the most medicines.
Likewise, these drug purchases represented approximately 12% of health expenditure in France the same year. According to this indicator, France is in 26th place among the countries which consume proportionally the most medicines. Even further from the podium.