New steps have been taken in Chile that will benefit patients who need high cost treatments.
Piga Fernández, LRG Global Consultant in Chile, together with representatives of 26 patient organizations has been working on a thorough revision of the project of law: “Ley Ricarte Soto.” They have created a document outlining the main observations and concerns they have, including:
1. High copayments and deductibles: The proposal in this law project does not resolve the financial catastrophe that patients’ families have to face.
2. Requiring scientific evidence of the efficacy of treatments to be covered: considering that most of the rare diseases that this law would cover have very few patients and no possibility of making scientific evaluations in our country, the proposal states consensus evidence and studies made abroad should be considered when scientific evidence is unavailable.
3. The project does not clearly establish the right to free and equal access to high cost treatments, which are intended to improve the quality of life of people affected by a disease. This right should be addressed in this new law.
4. The project establishes that the validation and modification of covered high cost treatments would be done every three years. The proposal is to change this to a shorter period of time, which will then allow for the evaluation of new treatments sooner.
The alliance of patient organizations met in early March with senators and deputies of different Political Parties who are members of the Congress Health Commission.
Hard work has been done, but there’s still much to do!