Price control for medicines?

Year 2008 is just two days old. In a matter of weeks, I would be a year older. But for now, after having consumed so much from the sumptuous foods, sweets and delicacies during the past two weeks we celebrated Christmas and the New Year, I’m sure most of us feel a few pounds heavier. It’s a good thing I have maintenance medicines to keep my blood pressure and sugar level in check. These are the things that come with the process of aging.

Speaking of medicines, I’m sure everyone is keeping a close tab on the much-awaited passage into law of the Cheaper Medicines bill. The bill was first approved by the Senate last year during the 13th Congress. Among the key provisions of this bill are the proposed amendments to the Intellectual Property Code which, among other things, sought to allow the parallel importation of locally patented drugs and to allow generic manufacturers to test, register, produce patented drugs prior to patent expiry. Sen. Mar Roxas II is the principal author and sponsor of this proposed law. Unfortunately, its counterpart bill at the House of Representatives, did not see the light of day at that time amid so much talk about intense lobbying by multinational pharmaceutical companies.

The same Senate bill was re-filed by Sen. Roxas as soon as the 14th Congress convened. His Senate Bill 1658, or the Quality Affordable Medicines bill, was approved again without much fuss in the Upper Chamber on Nov. 5. As chairman of the Senate trade committee, Roxas co-sponsored this measure with Sen. Pia Cayetano who chairs the Senate committee on health.

After so much last-minute floor debate, 205 of the 240-man House of Representatives approved on third and final reading the Cheaper Medicines Act of 2007 before the Dec. 21 Christmas break of Congress. Speaker Jose De Venecia cited “the overwhelming vote disproved once and for all the notion of a lobby out to derail approval of the legislation long awaited by the Filipino people.” Amen.

Iloilo Rep. Ferjenel Biron, a doctor by profession and author of the House version of this bill, estimated it could bring down the prices of medicines in drugstores all over the country by “at least 50 percent” once the Drug Price Regulatory Board is put in place. I just don’t know the basis of this very optimistic computation by the Congressman.

House Bill 2844 proposes to establish a Drug Price Regulatory Board to, among others, set the maximum retail price of drugs or medicines subject to price regulation. There will be a seven-man board that shall ensure cheap medicines must have the same quality as the branded ones. The House bill also includes a non-discriminatory or “must-carry” clause for parallel imported drugs or medicines.

In the Roxas bill, there is a provision that reiterates the President’s power, patterned after the Price Act of 1991, to impose drug price ceilings in times of calamity, public health emergencies, illegal price manipulation and other instances of unreasonable drug price hikes. Unlike the Senate version, which only invokes the Price Act of 1991 in cases of national calamities, the House version provides for a price regulatory body tasked to impose a ceiling in the prices of medicines. And this is now the bone of contention that would have to be settled by the bicameral conference committee tasked to reconcile the differing Senate and House versions of this proposed law.

As a free market advocate, Roxas has frowned against any form of price regulation by the State when he first became Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) during the term of deposed President Joseph Estrada. He has consistently stood for this free market policy when he joined the Cabinet of President Arroyo also as DTI Secretary. In fact, he has even personified it by being “Mr. Palengke” all this time.

By the way, it was during his stint in the Estrada administration as DTI chief when Roxas started the parallel importation of locally patented drugs that brought to the Philippines cheaper priced brand medicines for hypertension, asthma and for other common diseases that afflict Filipinos, especially the sick among lower income families. Roxas continued with this program when he re-assumed as DTI Secretary under the Arroyo administration before he ran and won in the Senate in 2004. So naturally, the Senator has consistently advocated this bill in single-minded focus like a laser-beam.

The Roxas bill also supports the generics medicines industry in our country by adopting the “early working” principle and to disallow the grant of new patents on grounds of “new use,” and granting ample muscles to the government through a framework for government use and compulsory licensing. The Roxas bill further recommends strengthening of the Bureau of Food and Drugs (BFAD) to serve as a counterfoil on attempts to bring in fake or substandard medicines. Among the safeguard measures in this bill is allowing BFAD, attached to the Department of Health (DOH), to retain its operating income from fees and other charges so it could upgrade its facilities and beef up its human resources to help ensure that only quality medicines reach the public.

The Quality Affordable Medicines bill had been certified by the President as urgent in the last Congress but it did nothing to move it through the legislative mills. Now, in the 14th Congress, the bill was endorsed anew as a priority measure during the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) meeting at Malacañang Palace on Dec. 11. The bill, as a priority legislation approved by the LEDAC, would hopefully usher in new pricing for both patented and off-patent medicine. 

The 14th Congress has more than enough time and no more reasons to further delay the passage into law of this measure sooner than later. This is why 2008 offers so much hope for this proposed legislation to finally see the light of day.