Healthcare: Critical for voters, ‘hot potato’ for parties in Dutch elections

Healthcare is considered a crucial topic for Dutch voters ahead of the national elections, however political parties have been reluctant to address it in their manifestos.

Dutch voters will head to polling stations on 22 November after Mark Rutte’s coalition collapsed over a row over migration policy in July.

While healthcare is the electorate’s top concern according to various polls, including the one commissioned by Dutch public broadcaster NOS, it’s a topic that the political parties are mainly avoiding.

“It is a difficult subject for many political parties because one thing they might need to do is to cut down on spending. So, addressing this subject this close to the elections doesn’t make them very popular,” Merit Boersma, a spokesperson for the Dutch Association of Innovative Medicines (VIG), told Euractiv.

The VIG, also a member of EFPIA, is paying close attention to access to new medicines, the innovation climate, and prevention in the run-up to the general elections.

Another issue on the VIG’s agenda is the explosion in healthcare expenditure and the increase of older adults requiring care.

The chairperson of ActiZ, an association representing 400 organisations involved in caring for the elderly and chronically ill patients, said in a statement that the ageing society requires courage and sharp choices.

“The election manifestos do not offer these,” ActiZ’s Anneke Westerlaken said.

ActiZ Public Affairs officer Olfert Koning told Euractiv that by 2040, there will be twice as many people in the Netherlands who are older than 75 as there are now.

“This means that politicians cannot avoid fundamental choices. There are already too many people who notice that their expectations of healthcare cannot be met,” Koning said.

“In reality, these elections are about access to and quality of care for the elderly. How will there be more housing for seniors? About how healthcare workers get more salary and less regulatory burden?” he added.

An ageing population and rising costs

In 2013, the government made care homes accessible to only elderly people with severe health conditions.

In response, healthcare institutions started shutting down such facilities – a move that led to thousands of job cuts. Fast forward to today, and the need for such professionals is high. However, job seekers are discouraged by the high workload and poor work conditions.

Furthermore, according to Olfert Koning, a third of healthcare employees will retire in the coming years.

“You can’t endlessly keep expanding the healthcare budget, so you have to look at other ways to ensure that you can keep giving the best healthcare to people. I think that’s the biggest challenge we are facing,” said Boersma.

From his end, Koning said that the Netherlands has to make political choices about who is entitled to what care, what quality society expects, and at what cost.

With the country already being one of the highest EU spenders on healthcare per inhabitant and the number of people needing care set to increase, solutions are desperately needed.

Part of the answer may lie in innovative medicines that offer patients a better quality of life and can treat previously untreatable conditions. While occasionally, there are breakthroughs in this kind of innovation, it isn’t of much help if patients can’t get access to new drugs.

Patients before money

In a recent debate organised by pharma companies Janssen, MSD, and Amgen, the right-wing PVV party Fleur Agema MP was critical about access to drugs in the Netherlands.

“People are actually dying in the Netherlands because the price is still being negotiated, and that is why they are not receiving new medicines,” Agema said.

She added that in neighbouring France, Belgium, and Germany, patients are prioritised to get their drugs. Negotiations between the government and the pharmaceutical companies on the price of a drug come later.

In the Netherlands, money is the first item on the agenda. Boersma said it’s a problem recognised by all parties.

“The timeline from when the [European Medicines Agency] says that the medicines are effective until the moment that they are available for patients [in the Netherlands] can sometimes take up to two years,” Boersma told Euractiv.

“We are working on this to see if we can maybe implement examples from other countries to improve accessibility,” she added.

One example the Netherlands may want to consider implementing is fixed timelines concerning drug access.

“Here in the Netherlands, our health technology assessment (HTA) body can take almost as long as they want to finish the HTA. In other countries, for example Belgium, they are working with fixed timelines,” VIG Public Affairs Manager Wouter Schelfhorst told Euractiv.

In his view, an added benefit would be the pressure on pharmaceutical companies to ensure that all their files are in order.

“One thing you see in many election programmes is the importance of a strong economic system with investments in innovation. That’s something we try to support from our side,” said Boersma.

“The innovation climate in the Netherlands has been under serious pressure during the last couple of years,” said Schelfhorst, who highlighted the need for the Netherlands to remain attractive for pharmaceutical companies, some of which already operate extensive research facilities in the country.

[By Christoph Schwaiger – Edited by Vasiliki Angouridi | Euractiv.com]

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