Abstract
Dramatically increasing in the cost of OPD drug reimbursement under the CSMBS resulting in policies
to control and reduce the cost. The cabinet mandated Comptroller General’s Department (CGP) to
manage such policies into practice. A technical taskforce was appointed and assigned to study and propose
policy recommendations. Based on a key study by the technical taskforce, medical benefit and
pharmacoeconomic aspects of Glucosamine HCL (GS) are not well established. Thus, it was recommended
to remove GS from the list of reimbursement. This resulted in the CGP regulation announced on January 1, 2011. Affected patients and other stakeholders fight against the regulation. Conflicts and arguments
were presented in newspapers continuously for 6 months. The analysis of news coverage using 62 news
clippings compared the achievement of policy advocate and the opposition in using media to affect policy.
It clarified that the advocate seemed to be more successful in output from media both in size and PR value
of news but the outcome return to be different. Resulted from sender, message and channel strategies and
variety of alliance, the opposition successfully blocked the regulation. This article suggests on future advocacy
and media strategies for CSMBS reform processes.
