EU Parliament Resolution: Let's save MedTech from inconsiderate measures that jeopardize the interests of Patients across the EU!
During the First Roundtable for MedTech at Luiss Business School on Thursday, October 24th, in Rome, participants were reached by the?dissemination of the European Parliament's resolution here attached. This document resonates with the points we were discussing, with Colleagues from the European Access Academy, Market Access Leaders from major MedTech Companies, and leading Consultants and Experts attending our session.
The European Parliament's resolution denounces the adverse effects of inadequate regulatory and governmental decisions that concern the MedTech industry. Our discussions at Villa Blanc in Rome explored the roots of some misguided decisions. I underscored some cognitive-linguistic causes of these problematic choices, which, from a Learnable Linguistics perspective, arise from the unconscious misuse of words and/or their meanings. A prevalent linguistic confusion affects the reasoning and the decision-making of various governmental and regulatory bodies when they extend pharmaceutical standards and practices to MedTech. Such faulty and biased decisions often threaten the survival of MedTech companies, and they eventually even contradict the original intentions of their authors and/or sponsors.
A prime example, in this sense, occurred, in July 2024, ?when the Italian MedTech industry was taken aback by the decision of the Corte Costituzionale to justify the payback measures that were extended 5 years earlier from Pharma into MedTech. A decision that was influenced by multiple factors and which was accompanied, by important mind-shaping and polarizing linguistic phenomena (i.e., Linguistic Exorcisms, False Friends, etc.). These produce some misunderstandings and biases, which ultimately affect human decision-making processes. The document detailing the Italian Corte Costituzionale's resolution appears to reflect on "linguistic exorcisms and spells" under which the Court members might have operated, with the attainment of outcomes that may appear to be irrational, unethical, and even socially counterproductive.
Learnable Linguistics suggests that words not only describe reality, but while they do so, they also obscure parts of reality, besides the one they describe (i.e. umbra cones). When the Members of the Corte Costituzionale labeled payback measures, as a form of "Solidaristic Contribution," they inadvertently exposed their most probable source of cognitive-linguistic bias. Analyzing via complementary semantic techniques the expression "Solidaristic Contribution" - which was leveraged by the Corte Costituzionale to justify their decision in support of payback requests, they also opted to tolerate some "Cynical Omissions of Cures", which are likely to expand in most vulnerable geographic areas. Such omissions, of care, will indeed almost certainly emerge in those Regions, where MedTech companies will no longer be able to serve, due to the higher propensity of such Regions to overspend and their higher probability to issue payback requests.
It seems crucial to note that not all Regions in Italy overspend. MedTech companies face payback requests only for their sales in overspending Regions. This means that these Regions will be the ones, the tenders of which MedTech companies will be obliged to avoid to contain the negative impact of payback regulations. Consequently, citizens in these areas will not have the same healthcare opportunities, as the ones living in Regions with higher levels of healthcare privatization and much better and/or sophisticated financial management systems.
This situation calls for careful reflection and concerted action to ensure that policies do not compromise equitable access to healthcare across Italy and Europe, as the attached document invites all European governments and institutions to do.