France’s national healthcare system will stop reimbursing patients for homeopathic treatments beginning in 2021, health minister Agnès Buzyn told Le Parisien newspaper on 9 July.
This comes after a national study by French medical and drug experts concluded in March that there is no evidence that homeopathic remedies work apart from a potential placebo effect. The French National Authority for Health also found in June that homeopathic remedies had “not scientifically demonstrated sufficient effectiveness to justify a reimbursement”.
Buzyn said refunds for these treatments will reduced from 30 per cent to 15 per cent by January 2020, and ultimately phased out the next year.
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According to a joint statement by the French national academies of doctors and pharmacists, an estimated 72 per cent of French people believe in the benefits of homeopathy and 52 per cent use homeopathic treatments.
In 2018, French social security refunded €126.8 million for homeopathic medicines out of a total of €20 billion in patient reimbursements, according to official figures.
In Britain, the National Health Service took a similar tack in 2017, ending prescriptions of homeopathic treatments. At the time, NHS England’s chief executive Simons Stevens said homeopathy is “at best a placebo and a misuse of scarce NHS funds”.
