Those who call it blackmail are admitting that they can be blackmailed. Don't let yourselves be so frightened! An individual patient may possibly live a bit (or sometimes even much) longer with a particular medication. But for the country as a whole, they have limited value. There is no fountain of youth. And if there were one, we would have even greater problems with the housing shortage.

Switzerland, a land of rigour and medical ingenuity, sometimes finds itself constrained under the weight of pharmaceutical giants. Holders of crucial patents and essential treatments, these laboratories wield a power that exceeds simple negotiation: imposing prices or delaying access to healthcare. Thus, the State is compelled to yield, not through weakness but through the inflexible logic of the global market, where profit dictates access to care. To give in becomes a condition of survival, to resist exposes one to deprivation. In this tension, coercion disguises itself as transaction, and the fundamental right to health finds itself suspended in the shadow of economic interests. Even a prosperous and disciplined nation cannot escape this reality: access to life and healing remains, for a time, under the seal of pharmaceutical blackmail.