Healthy Skepticism Library item: 2212

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

Davenport J.
Brand names carry price: Quebecers paid $18.7 million too much for drugs - generic manufacturers
Montreal Gazette 2001 Nov 15

Full text:

Quebecers paid $18.7 million more for brand-name prescription drugs in the fiscal period ending June 2001 than they would have paid for the generic equivalents, the Canadian Drug Manufacturers Association said yesterday.

“Often, people are just not well-informed that a generic drug is available,” CDMA president Jim Keon said. “Our role is to inform the population about the options available. Our audience is the population, including doctors, pharmacists and the government.”

The CDMA represents the generic- drug industry. While generic drugs account for about 40 per cent of prescriptions filled in other provinces, they account for only about 30 per cent of those filled in Quebec, Keon said.

He blamed the discrepancy in part on the “15-year-rule” in force in Quebec. Under the policy, the Régie de l’Assurance Maladie du Québec will reimburse consumers for brand-name products for 15 years after the products enter the market – even when generics, which typically cost at least 30 per cent less, are available.

In every other Canadian province, the public drug-insurance program covers only the least expensive version of the drug available.

The power of a label is so strong that even when a generic comes on the market, doctors and patients tend to choose the brand-name version, Keon said.

The figures made public yesterday by the CDMA are part of a study based on data compiled by the health-insurance board. It looked at prescriptions for the 12 prescription drugs which are most frequently used to treat cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart problems and depression, and for which generic versions are available.

It found that by choosing generics when available, consumers in the greater Montreal area alone could have saved $11.27 million. A Bristol-Myers Squibb anti-cholesterol drug – for which a generic version became available in 2000 – accounted for $4.77 million of the overspending in the area, according to the CDMA.

The generic version of the drug costs $1.50 per 40 milligrams compared with $2.15 for the brand name.

While doctors tend to prescribe drugs by brand name, the pharmacist has the right to substitute generics, and the consumer has the right to ask if a generic is available, the manufacturers’ association said.

A spokesman for Bristol-Myers Squibb defended the 15-year rule yesterday, saying that what effectively amounts to extended patent protection for the products of research-based pharmaceutical companies has yielded economic benefits for Quebecers in investment in the province.

“There’s another economic component you need to look at: one of the reasons the rule was set up was to make Quebec more attractive to research companies,” Noëlle-Dominique Willems, director of federal government relations, said.

But the 15-year rule also came under fire at a demonstration outside the Montreal offices of Quebec Health Minister Rémy Trudel yesterday, where members of the Coalition sur l’Assurance Médicaments and the Coalition Solidarité Santé gathered to call for a universal prescription-drug plan.

“It’s one policy that’s making the situation even worse,” said Jennifer Auchinleck, spokesman for the Coalition sur l’Assurance-Médicaments. “There is a need for more public education.

About 30 coalition members – most of them senior citizens – gathered outside the offices on Fullum St. to protest against the cost of prescription drugs under the present plan.

The program is likely to post a $169-million deficit for the fiscal year ending March 31.