The Transparency Commission of the High Authority for Health (HAS) has decided definitively in favor of the delisting of homeopathy, while 71.5% of French people are against this opinion, according to a Why Doctor poll.
We expected it: Transparency Commission of the High Authority for Health (HAS) has decided definitively in favor of the delisting of homeopathy by social security, reveals Release. An assessment of the medical benefit of homeopathic products that no more than 71.5% of French people share, according to a Why Doctor survey.
But the “HAS Transparency Committee voted by a very large majority (one vote against)”, specifies the daily. It must now officially inform the public authorities and the three manufacturers on Friday, namely the French laboratory Boiron, the world market leader, the Swiss Weleda and the German Lehning. All three have launched an online petition to support the reimbursement of homeopathy, in particular because the threat of reimbursement alone has reduced Boiron’s orders by 10%. The situation is such that the latter requested the suspension of its share price on Thursday.
The final decision rests with the government
The commission considers, after having analyzed nearly 300 studies, examined 29 contributions from trade unions, homeopathic doctors, user associations and heard from manufacturers, that “no study has demonstrated the superiority in terms of efficacy (morbidity) of homeopathic approach versus conventional treatments or placebo”.
But the final decision to no longer reimburse homeopathic products rests with the government. The Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn had already declared that she would agree with the opinion of the HAS transparency commission, but questioned on France 2 this Thursday morning, she indicated that she would wait a few days before returning a final opinion. According to her, “the urgency is to manage the heat wave”.
“Effective”, “natural”, “inexpensive”
More than 71.5% of French people believe that homeopathic treatments are “effective”, “natural”, “inexpensive”, “without danger” or “side effects”. Homeopathy is “less toxic” than “products derived from petrochemicals and chemicals and much less expensive, it is nonsense to attack them”, declared one of the respondents to our survey.
Homeopathy “costs less to the social security than the specialties of the pharmaceutical groups”, estimates another. But how much does it cost exactly? In 2016, 129,001,456 boxes of granules, liquid solutions and other homeopathic products were reimbursed, representing a cost of 56 million euros out of a total of 19 billion reimbursements. Homeopathy therefore represents around 0.29% of drug reimbursements made by social security each year.
“S‘there is no more homeopathy, we will all fall back on allopathy (traditional medicine, editor’s note) which costs much more and often leads to side effects”, explains a respondent. And another to specify: “I myself am a user, I could no longer afford it if the drug is no longer reimbursed.” For the majority of our readers, dereimbursing homeopathy “would be heresy”.
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