The representatives of the patient organizations contacted the Minister of Health Nitzan Horowitz and asked to include their representatives for the first time as members of the Medicines Basket Committee.
This is a strategic committee that decides which new drugs will be given to publicly funded patients, and for many patients it determines their fate.
In the next two weeks, the committee is expected to begin its deliberations for 2023. The committee will have a budget of NIS 550 million and its members will have to choose several dozen drugs to be added to the basket from a pool of about 450 drugs and 32 technologies.
The struggle is renewed, photo: GettyImages
This year, for the first time, the Medicine Basket Committee will be chaired by a woman, Professor Dina Ben Yehuda, who serves as the dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Jerusalem and is an expert in hematology.
The other members of the committee have not yet been appointed, but the compilation of the list of its members by the Minister of Health is close to completion.
The composition of the basket committee includes representatives of the ministries of health and finance, health insurance funds, doctors and public representatives who are former MKs, clergymen or people from academia or business. One of the criticisms of the committee deals with the fact that so far no members representing the patient organizations have been appointed.
"It is unthinkable that in the deliberations of the Basket Committee the public of patients will not be given real representation, which is the subject of the committee's deliberations and decisions," say Giura Sharaf, chairman of the blood cancer patients' association in Israel ("Halil Ha'or"), and attorney Eyal Zur Yu. R. the association for the support of Crohn's and colitis patients, in the appeal they forwarded to Minister Horowitz.
In recent years, a welcome initiative by the head of the Technology Assessment Division at the health basket, Tal Morgenstein, began, according to which patients write opinions on medicines and these are presented to the members of the committee, but the patient organizations claim that this is not enough.
"In the Western world, patient representatives have been participating in the committees that discuss the inclusion of medical technologies for many years," they stated in the appeal.
"There is no reason for Israel to be an exception in its conduct in this important area.
"The members of the basket committee, including the representatives of the public, however respectable and competent they may be, cannot fulfill the role of representing the public suffering from various diseases and cannot properly understand and represent their consequences. We have a historic opportunity to create a significant change in order to strengthen the public's trust in the committee's decisions, to contribute for transparency and to improve the committee's decisions".
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