Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17702
Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.
Publication type: news
McDowell A
Ontario's generic drug war may spread
National Post 2010 May 7
http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=2996117
Full text:
While an acrimonious showdown between Ontario and its pharmacists over ending generic drug rebates continues to fester, other provinces are watching, curious whether a similar prescription could help them control drug costs.
Ontario announced reforms last month intended to tackle the rising cost of generic drugs. The province will ban the practice whereby pharmaceutical companies pay “professional allowances” to pharmacists to stock and sell their products. The changes are to take effect on May 15 in the case of purchases for the public sector and by 2014 for private sales.
The rebate payments — which reached $750-million in 2009 in Ontario alone — are widely believed to have caused generic drug costs to rise steeply in recent years. Canadian patients and drug plans pay some of the highest prices in the world for off-brand drugs. Ontario hopes to save millions by lowering the cost of generic drugs to around a quarter of what the brand-name drug costs, from about half now.
In a letter sent to her fellow provincial health ministers last week, Ontario’s Deb Matthews tried to convince them to coordinate strategies to lower the cost of prescription drugs in Canada. She fears that unless a national strategy is adopted, drugstore chains will game the system by buying drugs in bulk in the provinces offering terms most favourable to them.
Meanwhile, predictions of possible negative consequences of Ontario’s policy — mom-and-pop drug stores shutting, bulk purchases being used as a work-around of the rebate rules — could be giving other jurisdictions pause.
Health ministers across Canada will watch what happens in Ontario, Manitoba Health Minister Theresa Oswald said in an interview yesterday. “In the absence of a national strategy, as provinces are trying to find their way in controlling prices, we’re going to be looking at what others are doing.”
Quebec has mused about following suit with a similar policy of its own on generic drugs.
New Brunswick’s Department of Health is likewise adopting a wait-and-see approach before exploring an end to rebates.
“The Department of Health will monitor the outcomes of this process in Ontario to assess impacts or opportunities in New Brunswick,” wrote a spokeswoman in an email to the Post.
A spokesman for the B.C. Ministry of Health Services wrote in an email that British Columbia is in negotiations with generic drug makers, and added, “British Columbia appreciates Ontario’s efforts to share information and keep other jurisdictions aware of developments in Ontario.”
At least some provinces are blaming the federal government for a breakdown in a multi-year effort to create a National Pharmaceutical Strategy. While that process is stalled, provinces are talking at the regional level about how to join together and force drug prices down. The Western provinces are working on a common purchasing plan, while the Atlantic provinces have begun discussions of their own with regard to a co-ordinated drug buying strategy.
In an email to the Post yesterday, Nova Scotia Health Minister Maureen MacDonald wrote, “The Atlantic provinces are in the initial stages of exploring where we can work together and collaborate to ensure medications remain affordable.”
Ms. Oswald added that the provinces must target the price of drugs in general, and not just generics.
