French government considers anti-homeopathy measure

[ceo_esq]

According to an article I read this month in a French economics magazine, the French Ministry of Health has proposed a reduction in the level at which the state reimburses consumer costs of homeopathic remedies. Currently in France, homeopathic medication costs are reimbursed at a rate of 65%, the same as for most conventional allopathic prescriptions. Under the proposed rule, only 35% of the cost of homeopathic remedies would be underwritten by the government.

The magazine suggested that this proposal was almost certainly motivated in part by increasing doubts at the Health Ministry regarding the effectiveness of homeopathic treatments, and could be a prelude to eventually eliminating state support of such remedies entirely.

[Rolfe]

This is interesting! France has always been a real hotbed of homoeopathy - though we have heard stories that many doctors are knowingly using it as placebo, when they think that's warranted. Do you have an on-line reference for the article?

It would make a nice counterbalance to the sort of thing the EU is always peddling about organic farming - how these nice residue-free homoeopathic remedies are the first thing any organic farmer should try. (In spite of no evidence of efficacy (http://www.slu.se/forskning/amne/vetmed/vettidn/2001/SVT%2014%20-01%201.pdf).)

By the way, "conventional allopathic prescriptions"? It's true that legislators who have been listening to too many AltMed gurus sometimes use the word "allopathic" innocently as meaning modern pharmacotherapeutic medicine, but no doctor will ever acknowledge such usage (http://www.ncahf.org/articles/a-b/allopathy.html). The term was coined by Hahnemann, who invented homoeopathy, and it has always been the AltMed camp's sneering designation for "real" medicine. Don't use it to a doctor any more than you'd call a black person "ni**er"!

Rolfe.

[ceo_esq]

Originally posted by Rolfe
This is interesting! France has always been a real hotbed of homoeopathy - though we have heard stories that many doctors are knowingly using it as placebo, when they think that's warranted. Do you have an on-line reference for the article?No, unfortunately. Someone left the magazine in the back of a taxi and I perused it. I imagine the story has been picked up by many online sources, though.

The French have first-rate medical schools and hospitals and a sophisticated pharmaceutical industry, yet they are absolutely enamored of many questionable forms of "alternative" medicine.

Homeopathy, for some reason, is a pet cause of the political left in France. I'm sure that phasing it out of the public health system is going to meet with resistance.

[BTox]

Originally posted by ceo_esq
According to an article I read this month in a French economics magazine, the French Ministry of Health has proposed a reduction in the level at which the state reimburses consumer costs of homeopathic remedies. ...

Good for them, at least it's a step in the right direction.