By Simone Ricci • 07 Sep, 2011
Altroconsumo mentioned it in its survey on the ten years of the euro, liberalization can be an effective solution for consumers: in fact, while many sectors have suffered price increases on price increases (above all the food and fuel sectors), there are some in which tariffs have dropped, primarily the pharmaceutical. But what advantages can we draw from liberalisations? According to Adusbef and Federconsumatori, the benefits could be evident: in particular, the unfairness of the government's financial maneuver lies above all in the measures to the detriment of citizens and to protect lobbies, while this gap would be corrected by greater liberalization of the pharmaceutical sector . We have been talking about this subject for the past five years, when the then minister Pier Luigi Bersani passed a specific provision. In practice, the results obtained since then have been important, above all for the revitalization of the national economy: for example, new jobs have been created and consumers have been able to save on products purchased over the counter, given that in normal pharmacies the same goods they carry a price higher by as much as twenty percentage points. So why not insist on this path and limit the experience to just one market? Competition is an ugly beast for multinationals, not even that which characterizes the drugs themselves is yet such. The request of the two consumer associations is clear, it is necessary to increase the sales of category C drugs also in parapharmacies: this category indicates that the product is fully borne by citizens, as well as being reimbursable and suitable for pathologies that are not considered serious . Liberalization should guarantee new savings for Italian families, in a period like the current one in which it is really hard to make ends meet: the Ministry of
