Drug companies fight European price controls
While Americans complain about high drug prices, observers say it's worth considering the role European socialism plays in the prices Americans pay for medicine, and how drug companies have begun to fight back.
It costs $800 million to create a new drug and drug companies attempt to make a profit by charging what the market will bear in the U.S.
Research and regulatory costs are rising fast total industry research and development (R&D) last year is expected to be about $30 billion.
But in socialist Europe, governments set prices for political reasons meaning Europeans refuse to pay their share of drug R&D costs.
Drug prices in France, for example, average just 42 percent of their U.S. level.
Now, drug makers are realising the American market can't single-handedly fund the world's drug research forever, and parts of the industry have decided not to take it any more. Pfizer recently told the French government that unless it re-evaluates its pricing policies, Pfizer might not sell certain drugs there. Astra-Zeneca has said it may pull out of some European markets if it can't get better prices.
Europe used to have its own drug industry, critics add, but price controls forced companies to shift their research dollars to the U.S. They add that the drug companies' hard line might show European consumers that the price of socialism is fewer life-saving drugs.
Source: Editorial, Europe's Addiction, Wall Street Journal,
January 2, 2002.
For text (WSJ subscribers) http://interactive.wsj.com/articles/SB1009926941735043120.htm
For more on Drug Prices http://www.ncpa.org/iss/hea/
RSA Note: The policies being followed by South Africa are likely to have similar consequences to those being experienced in Europe. South Africans may in future not have access to some life-saving drugs. Government officials have to learn that in the final analysis prices are not arbitrary, they are set by supply and demand in the market and if the price realised is inadequate to sustain production, the production and sale of the good or service will cease.
Eustace Davie, Director, FMF.
FMF Policy Bulletin\8 January 2002
Publish date: 15 January 2002
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