Cheaper medicines on the way

The mechanism used so far to compare medicine prices in Malta to the EU average has been revamped, resulting in a 53 per cent increase in the number of products that could be examined and potentially become cheaper.

The new mechanism, which will start working soon, comes at the end of another exercise that will see the price of about 40 more medicinal products being reduced by between three and 28 per cent. The list is expected to be announced by the government this week.

The products include medicines for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol. The majority of the products on the list will see their price being sliced by between 10 and 20 per cent.

This latest list brings the total number of medicines which saw a decrease in price to nearly 140 since last July when the prices of the first 62 products were cut by between six and 50 per cent.

The new mechanism could possibly bring down the price of many more medicines that were previously not compared to those sold in other European countries because of the way the previous system was operating.

Thanks to the new mechanism, a wider range of pharmaceutical products will now fall within the price monitoring exercise.

The Working Committee on the Pricing of Medicinal Products, presided over by the Parliamentary Secretary for Consumer Affairs, Chris Said, previously used an external price-referencing mechanism to compare local prices with the European average.

These were calculated using price values from a range of 12 reference countries categorised in three baskets – the low-priced products, the medium-priced ones and the high-priced basket.

The working committee, composed of government and non-government stakeholders, embarked on a process to change the mechanism because a number of medicinal products were not being examined as there was no comparative European average price.

A spokesman for the committee explained the optimisation in itself provided for a more accurate reflection of the prevailing pharmaceutical market so that better and more indicative reference price averages were used for comparison.

It significantly widened the scope of the mechanism resulting in a 53 per cent increase in the number of medicine prices that can be compared to a European average and, therefore, potentially revised.

Since last July, when the government announced an agreement with pharmaceutical importers on the reining in of medicine prices, officials from the Consumer and Competition Department carried out over 500 inspections in Malta and Gozo to ascertain the deal was being honoured. In certain cases, the pharmacy was asked about the amount of old stock on its shelves. In others, the need was felt to contact the importer to verify whether a particular pharmacy had bought any new stock since the agreement.

Speaking in Parliament in November, Dr Said had warned the government was committed to ensuring that consumer prices for medicines were fair and just even without any agreement with the stakeholders.

He said that, although he did not believe in price controls, he was ready to fix prices of products selling above the European average and make them mandatory by law.

Among the measures he said he would look into with the aim of introducing, Dr Said mentioned the possibility that the present voluntary price-fixing mechanism would become mandatory, meaning medicines would have to be sold at the price set by the working committee, which was set up to ensure the prices of medicines were just and reasonable.