The urgent need to amend the Cheaper Med Law

IT HAS been 10 years since the Cheaper Medicines Act (Republic Act 9502) was passed into law in 2008. Has it lived up to its promise of leveling down drug prices within reach of the poor?

So far, it has only lowered prices of a few, definitely overpriced drugs. For instance, while it’s true that the price of Pfizer’s Norvasc 5 tablet (anti-hypertension) has gone down from P44 to P25, the same drug costs only the equivalent of P3 in India and Pakistan.

No less than the original author of the original bill, Rep. Ferjenel Biron (4th District, Iloilo), has recognized the law’s flaw, prompting him to sponsor an amendment (House Bill 3252) seeking to impose direct price regulation based on production cost. The bill aims to create the Drug Price Regulatory Board as an attached agency of the Department of Health (DOH).

That regulatory board could have already served its purpose had Biron’s original 2008 draft not been discarded in favor of another mode. Instead of the regulatory board, it’s the President – upon recommendation by the Department of Health – who would regulate medicine prices in accordance with the Senate version of the bill filed by then Sen. Mar Roxas. Let us remember that Roxas was then entertaining the thought of running for President in 2010. He was hoping to be in position to lord over the drug cartel.

It’s this failure to create a regulatory body that has rendered the law ineffective against cartelization among big players in the drug industry. No wonder the Filipino people’s access to essential medicines is at the mercy of profit-greedy transnational drug corporations.

The Biron amendment pending in the present Congress would create the Drug Price Regulatory Board to be chaired by a representative from the DOH and co-chaired by a representative from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), with representatives from the academe, consumer groups, health professionals and economic organizations, among others.

Under the amendment bill, the drug manufacturers would disclose information with respect to costing. Only then would the government set the maximum retail price. Otherwise, drug pricing would remain in the collaborative hands of manufacturers and big drug store chains that have always resisted price control.

According to Biron, these big dealers control 80% of medicine supplies; they enjoy 30 percent discriminatory volume discount that is not passed on to customers. Price regulation would level the playing field, as it has done in China, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.

Since the existing Cheaper Medicines Law is silent about the control of transnational corporations (TNCs) in the marketing, distribution and pricing of medicines, their local competitors look like dwarfs in comparison. According to a non-government organization, Consumers Action for Empowerment (CAE), the country’s drug industry is controlled by TNCs, which corner no less than 70 percent of the medicines sold in the country.

On the other hand, the Council for Health and Development (CHD), a national organization of community-based health programs, bewails the unabated monopoly trade among big players in the drug industry that tends to further banish local manufacturers into oblivion. Indeed, the Filipino people’s access to essential medicines remains at the mercy of profit-greedy TNCs.

Very few drug dealers manage to directly import cheaper medicines and sell them at lower prices.

As in the previous years of refiling the same bill, Biron assumes the position of a David fighting a Goliath (the Big Pharma) capable of lobbying against his pending bill. Will he, like the biblical David, defeat the giant? (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)

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