Members of the basket committee decide how to divide NIS 500 million between drugs costing NIS 3.5 billion • 900 drugs worth NIS 3.5 billion were submitted to the committee • In obstacles: medicines whose prices suddenly jumped by thousands per cent • Today at 11:30, recommendations of the committee to the Minister of Health will be submitted
How does a veteran treatment, which exists in the medicine basket at a cost of about NIS 150 per patient, "leap" to a cost of NIS 3,900 per patient, 26 times the price? This is one of the fundamental issues that the Medicines Committee is currently facing.
Tomorrow at 11:30, the recommendations of the committee will be submitted to Minister of Health Jacob Litzman and some new drugs will be decided in the health basket. The committee has submitted 900 drugs worth NIS 3.5 billion, while the commission's budget is NIS 500 million.
Thus, for example, the committee's final hearings came up with a treatment called "hemangiole," which targets about 750 patients suffering from hemangioma, benign tumors of the skin that, besides aesthetic disorder, can cause internal organs, bleeding, or ulcers.
The new drug for all patients is expected to cost about NIS 3.5 million. The treatment that has been given to patients so far is the treatment of a veterinary drug based on a veterinary drug for the heart called "Darlene", which contains the active substance propranolol. However, in recent months, the Mangyol patent has been registered in Israel, a drug that has been used in clinical studies and the active ingredient lubricant is accurate compared to the pharmaceutical preparations. When the drug was registered in Israel, the Ministry of Health announced that the pharmacy was not allowed to sell.
In doing so, "Sundello" is a member of the drug basket committee because patients have no other alternative. During the hearing on Sunday, some members of the committee were charged with the issue, and one of them even commented: "I propose not to put in the basket and sue us. The Ministry of Health cannot prohibit the use of pharmacy preparation that has been used for decades." Another representative noted that the Ministry of Health had fallen asleep keeping watch and prescribed the drugs. The Ministry of Health's legal consultation found that the patent could not be infringed.