The country's medicines and vaccines group welcomes the government's move to institutionalize price negotiations as a sustainable tool to ensure access to quality medicines amid the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP) supports the use of price negotiations as a way to strengthen the government's leverage to provide quality and affordable medicines to Filipinos.
"In this time when resources are scarce, institutionalizing price negotiations will help the government maximize limited resources and enhance the support provided to Filipinos," PHAP Executive Director Teodoro Padilla said. “Price negotiation strengthens the bargaining power of the Government to drive prices down, and eventually providing medicines for free or at significantly lowered prices for the people.”
The Department of Health (DOH), the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) recently released a draft joint administrative (JAO) order which tackles the constitution of a price negotiation board.
Under the draft JAO, a price negotiation board shall be established to perform transparent price negotiation on behalf of the DOH and Philhealth. It adds that the Board, composed of government, healthcare, and patient organization representatives, shall “recognize that competition through public bidding is more effective in determining an efficient market price”.
PHAP, representing the research-based medicines, vaccines and diagnostics sector in the country, is in continuous collaboration with the Government on strategies to make medicines available and affordable through competition.
“We have been in dialogue with the government to promote Universal Healthcare, a policy signed into law by President Duterte, as the more sustainable approach to providing quality health care for all Filipinos. Tools to make medicines available under the UHC include pooled procurement and price negotiations,” said Padilla.
The pharmaceutical industry, just like other sectors, has been adversely affected by the pandemic. The significant contraction in the prescription market and unexpected disruptions in the supply chain, along with the imposition of mandatory price caps on medicines added to the burden of pharmaceutical companies struggling to recover losses, PHAP added.
Instead of mandatory price regulation, other countries implement price negotiation to improve medicine affordability and availability. For example, China introduced its price negotiation mechanism in 2017, achieving discounts of up to 71 percent by consolidating medicine requirements among its provinces.
In the Philippines, public-private partnerships that produced consolidated volume across government hospitals have resulted in major discounts of up to 50 to 74 percent for kidney transplant drugs and breast cancer treatments.
Facing the responsibility to provide life-saving medicines to Filipinos, PHAP also emphasizes on the need to continue investments into pharmaceutical research, especially with the ongoing
pandemic.
"Pharmaceutical research has always been overlooked but all the benefits we enjoy from science today stem from it. Research and development must continue for us to fight COVID-19. Also, there is no better time than today to prepare for any future pandemics," Padilla said.
For over a decade, PHAP has championed the promotion of the UHC Act and National Integrated Cancer Control Act.
These laws provide for more sustainable approaches to providing greater access to medicines through the introduction of pooled procurement, price negotiations, expanded medicine subsidy, early and special access schemes.
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