Interpretation of study on price of medicines flawed - Chamber of Commerce

A government study on the price of medicines failed to take into account the many factors that influenced the price of medicines on a particular market, the healthcare business section of the Malta Chamber of Commerce said.

The section said that the European average price may be influenced by subsidies or reimbursements pertaining to the particular national health system prevailing in many countries.

The Maltese price, it said, was also influenced by economies of scale. This was not merely a question of mathematical proportions, such as in the case of freight costs.

Moreover while the study says that around 40 per cent of the drugs on the market were more expensive than the EU average, it did not stipulate how much more expensive they were.

The section said that while in all EU states, innovative drugs were included for reimbursement, whenever the drug was deemed to be an advance in treatment of a particular ailment, in Malta, there has been an almost total freeze for new products on the formulary, for the best part of 10 years, with the exception of some cancer drugs just before the last elections.

It pointed out that only this week, Danish pharmaceutical companies decided to withdraw from the Greek market after the Greek government decided to cut the price of medicines by 25 per cent.

Since Greek prices were used as reference points in a number of EU countries, the companies’ risked that prices in other EU countries would also be subject to severe reductions.

Were companies to opt out of the local market, the section said, the detrimental effect would be double as Malta would risk losing employment opportunities in its emerging pharmaceutical sector. It would also risk access to innovative drugs.

The section insisted that it was in favour of fair pricing and said that it was at its suggestion and initiative that the Price Monitoring Board was set up. This board, it said, was now functioning properly with the full support of the business section and other stakeholders.