Medicine prices are still far too high (1)

By now I have got used to taking stories such as Cheaper Medicines On The Way (January 3) with a bagful, not just a pinch, of salt. Here’s why.

In a letter I wrote to The Times (October 25) I provided proof that the medicine Zocor 20 mg in Malta sells for €24.74 per box of 28 pills and in Istanbul for just €3 (5 Turkish lira)!

On October 28, the communications coordinator of Chris Said’s Secretariat for Consumer Affairs, Mario Xuereb, replied in The Times saying, among other things, that prices of medicines vary from country to country and sometimes comparing the price with one particular country “is not realistic”.

I wrote back on November 2 pointing out that, despite the much-trumpeted reduction of 30 per cent in the price of a packet of Zocor 20 mg pills, the price in Malta remained eight times higher than in Istanbul. Mr Xuereb never replied.

On November 10, another story about the scandalous medicine prices being paid by Maltese consumers was published in a local newspaper (not The Times).

The medicine concerned was a box of 50 pills of Tegretol 200 mg. In Malta such a packet sells at €18.12. In various cities in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia) the same packet of Tegretol pills was purchased for €3.80 – five times less! The writer also gave the prices he found in France (Marseilles) at €5.75, in Rome and Milan at €5.70 and Greece at €4.20. Yet, again, there was no reaction whatsoever from Dr Said’s secretariat!

This is why I was not at all impressed when reading the January 3 front page story of The Times saying that “The majority of products on the list will see their price sliced by between 10 and 20 per cent” when the prices of certain medicines in Malta are between three and eight times higher than prices found in other European countries.

I strongly believe that medicine prices in Malta should be equivalent, or very near, to prices found in other Mediterranean countries where wages and pensions are more or less equivalent to ours.