Welcome to Tuesday’s Morning Health Care! It’s the first day of Gastein and Claudia and I will be here all week, so we’re going to need gossip to survive. There are rumors about a place where people dance in a cage to let their hair down; if you know anything, do tell. What happens in Gastein …
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A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION, A LITTLE MORE ACTION: The slow implementation and inefficiency of health policy across Europe is hampering the bloc’s ability to respond to major challenges like climate change, health security, AI and workforce issues, says Clemens Martin Auer, the president of the European Health Forum Gastein. Europe doesn’t have a lack of ideas or technical skills to tackle major problems facing the sector, but rather an implementation problem, he told Morning Health Care in an interview ahead of his last conference as head of the forum, with his final day on Oct. 31. “The older I get, the more impatient I am with the slowness of our policy implementations,” he said.
More action needed: As health experts, industry representatives, and everyone in between descend on Gastein, Austria, for a four-day health conference, Auer is calling for more action. “We are living in really challenging times, and my observation is that we don't do enough to change the situation.”
Capricious U.S. health policies, including a push by the Trump administration to reduce domestic drug prices (more on this below), were creating global uncertainty and impacting where drugmakers were investing, Auer said, pointing to increasing investment in China. Health systems in Europe could only be counterbalanced if countries were willing to pay more for products like generics to shore up supply chains, he said. “If you want to safeguard that supply, then you have to be willing to pay more for them.” His comments come as the pharma industry is set to play a major role at the conference across multiple panels, with U.S. policies and European drug prices running as an undercurrent in most major discussions on health security, accessibility, and competitiveness.
Auer pointed to the Draghi report, which proposed a plan to increase competitiveness more than two years ago. “ Do we see any implementation, substantial implementation? The economic numbers and data are getting worse.”