The Minister of Health plans to reimburse 171 drugs by 2026, a decision that could impact many patients.
Gaviscon, Valium, Betadine… towards the end of the reimbursement for 171 drugs
Should we expect to pay more at the pharmacy in the coming months? It is an increasingly concrete hypothesis. The Minister of Health Yannick Neuder has reopened an old explosive file: that of the derepressure of medicines deemed at “low medical service” (SMR), currently reimbursed up to 15 %.
Among them, names well known to the general public such as Gaviscon®, Valium®, MeteospasMyl®, Dexeryl®, Noctran®, Zovirax® or Betadine®. These products, qualified as “comfort drugs”, cost nearly 600 million euros each year to health insurance.
The Minister justifies this decision as a necessary rebalancing: “We must focus our efforts on high SMR treatments, reimbursed at 65 % or 100 %, where clinical gain is demonstrated”he said during an interview on LCP on June 2, 2025 and postponed by Women’s Journal.
This orientation is based on a list of 171 pharmaceutical specialties established by the CNAMTS, on the opinion of the Transparency Commission of the High Authority for Health (HAS). Some of these treatments are however used by patients with chronic or functional disorders, which feeds the concern of many associations.
A reform in gestation for the 2026 budget
For the moment, this is only a project under study, but everything indicates that it could integrate the future law of social security financing (PLFSS) for 2026. If the measure is acted, it would be part of a broader movement of reduction in the rate of reimbursement of the processing of treatment deemed less effective, began in 2024. A decision that meets an urgent need for controlling health expenditure.
The list of targeted drugs is long, affecting a wide variety of specialties: anti-acids (Gaviscon®, Gastropulgite®, Moxidar®), antispasmodic (Meteospasmyl®, Debridat®), anxiolytics (Valium®), Antiseptics (Betadine®, Hexomedine®), local antivirals (Zovirax®) (Dexeryl®), hypnotics (Noctran®), and many others.
These products could disappear from the reimbursement from 2026, unless political reversal. For patient associations, this measure may worsen inequalities in access to care, especially in the most precarious. The government will have to decide between budgetary imperative and health equity.