I sometimes like to imagine a whole armada of federal civil servants, taken out of their offices and placed in a laboratory to try to manufacture medicines for us... And I can't help but think of Monty Python then, for some reason.

The fact is that pharmaceutical companies, large or small, have expertise that we all depend on at certain times. The State can issue calls for tender or public-private partnerships, but in the end, you need a company that knows how to do this, and it won't do it "not for profit".

If we pay this price out of our own pockets, there's a certain justice (I'm ill, I cost money, so I pay). If we all pay through our taxes via the State, there's also a (different) justice: I'm fortunate to be healthy, I support the sick. This distribution of costs is the only choice to be made in this story, it seems to me.

There is an increase in healthcare costs. There is an increase in the costs of drug treatments. Moreover, there are treatments that are no longer being produced because the prices set by the Confederation do not suit the manufacturers, so instead of reducing their margins, they stop producing certain medicines.

The Confederation AND the cantons must build a factory for fundamental treatments, manufactured with a non-profit system (simply paying for the manufacturing costs, and nothing more), generic treatments. The factory would at the same time serve to create jobs, which would be a gain for the community through the reduction of welfare expenditure, unemployment and other costs. This would reduce pharmaceutical expenditure, AND ensure the country's supply of all treatments, and would remove from the hands of industrialists seeking to maximise their profits the threat of no longer manufacturing a treatment.