The case of statins, pills to fight cholesterol, for which the health system spends around 70 million a year in Puglia: a quarter more than the national average
Pharmaceutical spending in Puglia is out of control, a lot
which in 2016 (the figure is not yet definitive) may have exceeded the ceiling of almost 350 million. Too many medicines, and above all too expensive. This is the case of statins, pills to fight cholesterol, for which the health system spends around 70 million a year in Puglia: a quarter more than the national average.
This is why the Region, which has launched an extraordinary plan to control drug prescriptions, started with statins. The monitoring data, moreover, would seem to suggest the existence of some anomaly. In the face of the six active ingredients of statins on the market, monitoring over the first six months of 2016 showed a situation worthy of further investigation: in fact, Apulian doctors seem to prefer the only one of the six covered by a patent and without the availability of equivalent generics.
In the first half of last year, Puglia recorded 23% more prescriptions than the national average for Crestor, Simestat and Provisacor, the commercial name of rosuvastatin, the second generation statin produced by Astra Zeneca which costs two and a half times more than the more common simvastatin. And even the 48% more prescriptions than Goltor, Vytorin and Inegy, Merck drugs that combine simvastatin with ezetimibe, a new (very expensive) active ingredient that blocks the absorption of cholesterol.
There's more: rosuvastatin-based drugs cost the Apulian health service more than 20 million euros a year and are the most prescribed type of statin. As if, in short, the majority of Apulians need treatment with the newest and most expensive drug.
