Drug firms blink, slash medicine prices

PRESIDENT Arroyo has ordered the Health Department to review the cuts made by medicine makers on 22 critical drugs before she decides whether or not to sign an Executive Order detailing what those cuts should be, an official said yesterday.

The Cheaper Medicines Act mandated the price cuts on the 22 medicines, and last week Mrs. Arroyo ordered the Health Department to force drug makers to submit their suggested reductions by July 18 or she would sign the order that the agency had drafted.

Both Malacañang and the Health Department have said that the drug firms must make drastic price cuts on the medicines or the government will make the cuts, and yesterday deputy presidential spokesman Anthony Golez said the medicine makers made it to the deadline.

“The Department of Health will review their [cuts] to see if they have met the requirements set by law,” he said.

If not, the President would sign the order, he said.

But on Saturday, a Pfizer spokesman said a 50-percent price cut on the medicines would hurt drug makers and the economy.

“It’s really painful,” Pfizer medical director Anthony Leachon told dwIZ radio.

“We don’t want to cut to the bone,” he said, adding there was nothing in the Cheap Medicines Act ordering the 50-percent price reduction.

The Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines said cutting the prices of essential medicines by half would bring their sales down by 40 to 50 percent, though drug makers could recover the loss if more people bought them, group executive director Reiner Gloor said.

But cutting the prices of essential drugs would not benefit the poor because those were not a priority with them, Leachon said.

“Even if you cut drug prices, if they don’t have the money to buy them you accomplish nothing. Food is still their priority,” he said.

The drug makers said they submitted their cuts on Friday, a day ahead of the deadline, and those covered anti-hypertensive drugs such as amlopidine, telmisartan, and irbesartan; the anti-thrombotic drug clopidogrel; the anti-cholesterol drug atorvastatin; the anti-diabetes drug gliclazide; antibiotic drugs such as ciprofloxacin, azithromycin, metronidazole and co-amoxiclave, and anti-cancer drugs such as bleomycin, carboplatin, cisplatin and mesna.

Senator Mar Roxas urged Malacañang and the Health Department to disclose the cuts suggested by the drug firms.

“Stop these secret meetings,” he said.

“Make public the list of cheap medicines so they can be made available now in drugstores.”

Senator Loren Legarda urged the government to implement the law.

“We should now allow the drug companies to interpret the law for us,” she said.

“For so long they have exploited our people by charging excessive prices for their medicines… even while they are priced much lower in other countries.” –Joyce Pangco Pañares, Macon Ramos Araneta, Fel V. Maragay, Manila Standard Today