Benchmark against Nintendo in order to enable more health investments and increase choice?

“The opposite to focus on the citizen seems to be failure” Robert Madelin Director General at DG Sanco opened up at the MedTech Forum 2009 Summit. He then continued by explaining that key for the future will be to look at how companies like Nintendo build their business. This since that in the future funding will originate “not necessarily from health budgets but from peoples willingness to pay”.

Spot on. I must admit I think its strange that everyone seems to manage to find money for their own mobile phones but when it comes to even more important things like healthcare products and processes these essential products needs to be funded via governmental budgets. Since governmental budgets per definition are limited this is must be putting a effective cap on citizens health investments.

Dr Miroslav Palat seemed to also take special notice of Mr Madelins Nintendo statement taking the discussion a bit further by pointing out that we all now agree upon patient empowerment but that “the we still need to hear how are we going to open up the healthcare system as a true market for the patient to make informed choices?” And right he is. Choice is a key component in real empowerment and how can choice really be implemented as long as healthcare is a centrally planned service to the citizens by the government? Not all believes in choice since some citizens will fail when making their own choices but as former UK Health Minister and MEP John Bowis stated as a response to Mr Palats questions: “ those that make difficult choices makes a lots of mistakes but those that avoid choices makes the biggest mistake of all”.

Maybe because he´s 5 years mandate that cannot be prolonged have come to its end Mr Madelin he could be quite outspoken and when he responded to Dr Palat he explained that there is clearly people in Brussels that hate the concept of market in healthcare but that for him the Directive on patients rights at cross border care is clearly a step forward in this direction. He continued that the reality is that this part of empowerment is growing.

Lets hope he is right since the only ones that really will focus on the citizens are the citizens themselves.