A French pharmaceutical industry-led consultation has placed access to medicines and therapeutic innovation among the areas where participants most strongly want changes to the healthcare system. The exercise adds a stakeholder perspective to current debate over assessment, reimbursement and the conditions needed to maintain access to new treatments.
The Pharmaceutical Companies Association (Les Entreprises du Médicament, LEEM) published the first conclusions from Qu’attendent les Français de leur système de santé ? La concertation nationale pour l’avenir du médicament livre ses premières conclusions (What do French people expect from their healthcare system? The national consultation on the future of medicines delivers its first conclusions) on 22 July.
The consultation ran from 11 March to 1 June and received contributions from around 4,200 citizens and 400 healthcare stakeholders. It combined an online platform with interviews, multidisciplinary workshops and public discussions in Dunkirk, Strasbourg and Paris. A panel of three guarantors oversaw the process.
Access emerged as one of the strongest themes. Forty-three per cent of participating citizens considered access to medicines slower in France than elsewhere in Europe, rising to 58.8% among healthcare professionals. Contributions attributed difficulties particularly to reimbursement processes, organisational barriers and territorial inequalities, and called for changes to assessment, authorisation and financing arrangements.
The consultation also produced a broader view of pharmaceutical value. Seventy-three per cent of citizen respondents regarded therapeutic effectiveness as the main consideration in determining whether a medicine’s price is justified. Participants also argued that assessment should take greater account of wider consequences of treatment, including avoided hospitalisation, complications, loss of autonomy and effects on carers. Healthcare professionals generally supported investment in research and development, but linked this to demonstrated clinical value and efficient integration into care.
The access findings measure perceptions rather than comparative system performance. National Health Insurance (Assurance Maladie, AM) reported separately in June that 83% of 72 recent medicines offering therapeutic progress had received early access in France, allowing first access to occur particularly rapidly for many of these products. The two findings are compatible: early access can provide rapid initial treatment while later assessment, price negotiation, routine reimbursement and territorial implementation remain sources of delay or frustration.
LEEM’s consultation does not itself establish a policy programme, but it broadens the industry’s existing access argument beyond launch statistics and pharmaceutical attractiveness. It presents faster and more equitable access, recognition of therapeutic value, supply resilience and sustainable financing as concerns shared across a wider group of participants as France considers further changes to medicines policy.
Source: Les Entreprises du Médicament, LEEM, the pharmaceutical manufacturers’ industry association
Link: Qu’attendent les Français de leur système de santé ? La concertation nationale pour l’avenir du médicament livre ses premières conclusions (What do French people expect from their healthcare system? The national consultation on the future of medicines delivers its first conclusions)
Date: 22 July 2026
Source: National Health Insurance
Link: Observatoire délais d'accès médicaments innovants (Observatory of access times for innovative medicines)
Date: 16 June 2026
