When cheap isn´t a bargain

Swedish largest daily Dagens Nyheter lead editorial today comments the announced slowdown of pharma costs in Sweden.

They do point out that this is not necessarily good, that Sweden certainly can afford to invest in medicines to its citizens. Especially the new innovative pharmaceuticals that do for some patients have quite a real life changing (or life saving) effect. The conclusions is that not only is the attitude to always save on expensive drugs not necessarily a wise one but even more problematic is that the different cost saving efforts leads to a post-code lottery where Swedes gets different quality of healthcare pending on where they live.

I hope DN will manage to drive opinion in Sweden for the perception of healthcare as a long term investment instead of a mere cost to the government. This could ensure a more open minded starting point when equality in care and access to pharmaceuticals are discussed under the Swedish lead at various EU meetings. It is time for quite a lot of member states to realize that they too can and should spend more on healthcare to their citizens. Because they can´t afford not to.