MEMBERS of the medical profession in Pangasinan served notice on Monday they will hold a motorcade, noise barrage and simultaneous release of balloons in the coming days in order to dramatize their sentiment against the Cheaper Medicine Bill.

Dr. Gozar Duque, president of the Pangasinan Medical Society (PMS), clarified that the Cheaper Medicine Bill passed by the House of Representatives last year, is noble as it will lower the cost of medicines, except for one particular provision that is highly questionable.

This is Section 6 that seeks to remove from the doctors the prerogative of prescribing medicines which, in their own thinking, are the best cure for the ailment of their patients.

Duque sounded off the doctors’ sentiment against the Cheaper Medicine Bill during a news conference they called Monday morning at the PMS building on A.B. Fernandez Avenue West, attended by some of the leading physicians and health specialists in Pangasinan.

That particular provision, he said, removed from the doctors the power to prescribe the best medicines, which in their own professional evaluation, are the best for their patients.

“Medicines are like cars,” Duque said. “There are cars that are good, beautiful, not so good and durable. Same too with medicines, there are effective and not so effective medicines, and medicines with side effects and those with little or no side effect at all,” said Duque.

In his own view, only the doctors know the capacity of a particular medicine that is needed by their patients and no one else.