Who doesn’t know Doliprane? Few people, according to the figures presented by Health Insurance, on Thursday, November 14. Between June 2023 and June 2024, the French’s favorite painkiller was prescribed to some 36 million patients, that is, more than 60% of insured people covered by the health organization. The success of the iconic little yellow box is clear. With 308.2 million boxes delivered to prescription pharmacies during the same period, Doliprane is the most prescribed medication in France.
It’s not a big surprise. It has been more than a decade since the latter climbed to the top of the podium. And this, far ahead of any other treatment, as Health Insurance points out in its summary of the most consumed reimbursed medications in France between June 2023 and June 2024. The second on the list, Dafalgan, another analgesic paracetamol base, marketed by the Upsa laboratory, thus shows four times fewer boxes (71.6 million) sold, while number three, Levothyrox, indicated for hypothyroidism, has 31.6 million boxes supported.
If in this top 20 a privileged place is given to paracetamol, of which “France continues to be the largest consumer in Europe”notes Sophie Kelley, head of health products at Health Insurance, it also includes other brands well known to the French, such as Zymad (23.2 million boxes), aimed at preventing vitamin D deficiencies, the antithrombotic Kardegic (26.7 million of boxes), Ventolin (12.8 million boxes), to treat asthma attacks, or the antispasmodic Spasfon (9.7 million boxes).
Expensive progress
However, these medications, although widely prescribed, are not the ones that weigh the most on the Health Insurance budget. Thus, Doliprane, whose most widespread reference on the market, the box of eight 1-gram tablets for adults, has a sales price of 2.18 euros, cost the health organization 265 million euros between June 2023 and June 2024. A significant amount, but much less than innovative medicines.
It is these treatments, often recent, that provide therapeutic advances in serious or chronic pathologies with respect to therapies already on the market, that maintain the highest cost in terms of value. Of the more than 12,000 references of medicines covered by Health Insurance, the 20 most expensive treatments represented 7.3 billion euros, or 28.3% of the health insurance organization’s spending on medicines in 2023.
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