Posted by Michael Wonder on 24 Jan 2019
Ottawa’s push for lower drug costs may hurt patients, stunt innovation
24 January 2019 - The federal government’s plan to lower prescription drug prices could impede access and thus limit the benefits of life-saving drugs and discourage innovation, finds a new study released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.
The Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB)—a federal body that regulates the prices of all patented medicines in Canada—is expected to implement new rules to regulate lower drug prices.
“Ottawa’s new cost-containment plans for pharmaceuticals—while driving prices down—may also unfortunately lead to reduced access to new drugs for Canadian patients and even deter the investment by pharmaceutical companies needed to discover new medicines,” said Bacchus Barua, associate director of health policy studies at the Fraser Institute and co-author of Pharmaceutical Regulation, Innovation, and Access to New Drugs: An International Perspective.
The study raises serious concerns about the underlying process used to regulate drug prices including a bias towards cost savings rather than extending life.
