Home » Health » “Lower doses of antidepressants should also be reimbursed” – Radar

“Lower doses of antidepressants should also be reimbursed” – Radar

Many patients who are no longer depressed continue to take antidepressants. To get rid of it, some of the patients need pills in lower doses, but they are not reimbursed by most health insurance companies. The Dutch Psychiatric Association (NVvP) tells Zembla that the insurers are not honoring their agreements about this.

So-called tapering medication, with lower doses, is not sold by pharmaceutical companies. One Dutch pharmacy, the Regenboog Apotheek in Bavel, does offer tapering schedules and packages the medicines in so-called ‘tapering strips’. Until now, the phasing out method has only been reimbursed by the small insurers DSW and Eno. The four largest insurers, Zilveren Kruis, VGZ, CZ and Menzis, do not do this. According to them, there is still insufficient scientific evidence.

‘Insurers made a commitment to reimburse phasing out schedules in 2018’

Elnathan Prinsen, chairman of the NVvP, fears that it will take years before that evidence is available. ‘You can’t say to all patients who are now dealing with these problems: well, just wait four, five, six years before we have more knowledge.’ The professional associations in psychiatry drew up their own manual in 2018. According to Prinsen, insurers then promised to reimburse the phasing out schedules.

The four major insurers inform Zembla that they do reimburse adjusted tapering schedules in exceptional cases, but only if the patient substantiates this properly. In practice, this does not happen often: in 2020 VGZ reimbursed 0 times, CZ 5 times, Menzis 15-20 times and Zilveren Kruis 123 times. The number of applications is unknown.

Source: ANP

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