E-drug: EU agrees deal on cheaper drugs (cont'd)
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What would be the difference between a brand name company
creating "generic" versions of drugs it has patented and simply selling
the "brand name" version at a lower price? I feel like patent law would
have to be respected in this respect, but all the stuff would be trivial
since they could just play around with it as they liked if they are the
same company. So I see the benefit of this as being [I presume this is
what you are getting at], that when the US wants to use external price
referencing it doesn't see Pfizer selling the drug it sells here in the US
for $5,000 being sold in Brazil for $1,000 since it's a "generic" drug
under a different name.
However, since drug companies often argue that they can't price their
drugs any lower (when they do lower prices for developing countries)
its on the argument that they have discovered new manufacturing
advances that allow them to cheapen the production process. So if
they had a generic branch of the company producing the drugs for
less that would greatly hurt this argument, and probably bring on
another kind of external price referencing in the US.
Does this make sense? Am I wrong on this?
I think the solution is a fundamental change in the way we approach
this. Like the US is theoretically at least, making a move to allow
easier entry of generics. I think drug industry profits are going to be
cut. There have been reviews even of the extent of patent protection
here in the US to address the concerns of blanket protection. You
have to allow developing countries to get cheap drugs, and at that
point the focus should be on clearly showing that fears of re-
importation back into the US and Europe. That and somehow
justifying to these people that they are paying higher prices for drugs
because they can, and so they must, and they have health care so it's
different.
Either that a fundamental change in the way we research R+D which I
think people like Jamie Love have been advocating, which I haven't
really followed and don't really know about.
Rene
Rene Shen
National Advocacy Coordinator
Student Global AIDS Campaign
10700 SW 61 Ave
Miami, FL 33156, USA
e-mail: rshen@fas.harvard.edu
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