Dutch health authority accepts foreign trips from drugs firms: NRC

DutchNews.nl, Saturday 14 June 2014

Theo Langejan, chairman of the NZA.

(NOS/NZA/ANP)

The Dutch healthcare authority NZa accepts foreign travel trips from companies which do business with the organisation or which the authority supervises, the NRC said on Saturday.

The paper has carried out research into Theo Langejan’s expenses claims and concludes the NZa has broken its own guidelines on foreign travel.

Other regulators, such as the financial services authority AFM and consumer and markets authority ACM do not accept paid trips on principle, the paper says.

Drugs firms

Since 2010, Langejan has been on at least 16 trips paid for by companies and healthcare institutions. In April 2012 he spent four days in a hotel on the French Rivièra, courtesy of drugs company Pfizer. The suite where he stayed cost €700 a night, the paper says.

The NZa decides which medicines are covered by Dutch health insurance, and that includes Pfizer drugs, the NRC points out.

Accountancy and consultants PwC has funded all in trips to Singapore, Washington, South Africa and Mexico. Langejan made these trips as an ‘advisor’ to a PwC think tank but in NZa time, the NRC says.

KPMG, which did €420,000 worth of advisory work for the NZa in 2012. It also paid for Langejan to attend a KPMG European Health Summit in Brussels, even though he had no role in the programme.

The NZa’s policy is to have sponsors pay travel and hotel expenses if an NZa official is speaking at a congress. Langejan’s predecessor Frank de Grave distanced the organisation from this policy.

The NZa said in a reaction that none of the trips the NRC has written about break the NZa’s internal rules.

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"THE BRIDGE OF SWORDS" – Sep 29, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) - (Text Version)

“…I'm in Canada and I know it, but I will tell those listening and reading in the American audience the following: Get ready! Because there are some institutions that are yet to fall, ones that don't have integrity and that could never be helped with a bail out. Again, we tell you the biggest one is big pharma, and we told you that before. It's inevitable. If not now, then in a decade. It's inevitable and they will fight to stay alive and they will not be crossing the bridge. For on the other side of the bridge is a new way, not just for medicine but for care. Paradigms that have not yet been thought of, which don't represent any system that currently exists, will be created and developed by young minds who have concepts that the seniors don't know about. Things that don't have integrity today will fall over tomorrow. Just get ready. It's all part of what's on the other side of the bridge. And the old energy won't like it, and they will object. …”