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Recently in Spain....

Prices on telecommunications in Spain lower, vertical integration higher

Telefónica is launching a social platform for youngsters called Tuenti. After a brief period of service injustice, the end user terms of Tuenti now permit users to engage in services like streaming, but still prohibit "large-scale file-sharing" (but without specifically mentioning peer-to-peer protocols as the targets of this fair use policy). While telecommunications prices in Spain are decreasing there is still a rather worrying tendency in particular mobile connection offers to go for vertically integrated service models: the service provider provides not only access to infrastructure and actual transmission of communications, but also to the specific services through which transmission is made (in this case the social platform). These contemporary examples of lock-in should have been a concern of the European Commission when they were looking at net neutrality legislation - maybe this is (yet another) good time for them to re-evaluate their decision to wait and see? The ITRE committee in the parliament expressed as much last year in November. Chile and the Netherlands already have net neutrality legislations and now appears to be a good time for other member states to follow.

Access to pharmaceuticals takes on a new dimension...

The financial crisis in Spain has hit many parts of the Spanish public sector. Already in the middle of February, large pharmaceutical providers advertised that they might stop supplying the public health care in specific districts with more medicines as a result of large public debts and inability to pay old bills. Now, the pharmaceutical companies have decided to put an ultimatum: either the bills are paid, or the supplies are cut. In light of this, it's quite encouraging to know that the Spanish government of last year made a regulatory change that makes obligatory the prescription of generic drugs by doctors when generic alternatives are available. Similar laws are in place in the Netherlands and Sweden (among others?), while the regulatory framework in for instance Belgium still leaves it up to the discretion of the doctor to choose whether to prescribe a brand or generic (normally the substance will be the same, and the difference is in whether the pharmacy supplies the patient with a specific brand name product, or any product the active ingredient of which is equivalent to that of the brand name product).

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Not exactly. Of course it's important that public institutions pay their bills and the only extortion method a private delivery company has is to cut supplies. I find it surprising though that it's taken Spain so long (in comparison with the Netherlands and Sweden) to make reforms in the systems for pharmaceutical subscription. In Sweden, for as long as I remember, it's been mandatory to prescribe the substance, not a brand name providing a substance, and the pharmacy has a duty to sell you the cheapeast generic brand. Basically this could have been, or is now actually because a new law is in place since august last year, a way of keeping costs down and manageable, instead of paying much money to IPR holders once the upkeep of those payments aren't strictly necessary.

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