Press releases

Today patients and health budgets may sometimes be paying through the roof for expensive medicinal treatments that are not necessarily efficient. The position adopted today by the European Parliament, to pool efforts by Member States in testing how efficient medicines are, could change that.

The EU Commission plans to improve consumers’ access to their own health data, whether they are checking it online or when they need it when abroad. Today’s plans aim to improve electronic health, or ‘e-health’. The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) applauds the move as 90% of consumers would like to manage their own health data.

Today, the EU Commission has proposed to reinforce Member States’ collaboration when they assess the added value of health technologies, such as medicines, medical devices or surgeries. This will lead to a better use of taxpayers’ money, in turn channelling money towards more innovative treatments and research. BEUC supports the idea of joining efforts to conduct Health Technology Assessment (HTA) in Europe and highlights some requirements to make the system work for consumers.

The European Commission opened a formal investigation into Aspen Pharma's pricing practices for cancer medicines. BEUC had requested the European Commission in 2016 to investigate the company’s significant price increases for some of its anticancer medicines.