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BY HERBERT VEGO
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Sunday, October 22, 2017
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REP. FERJENEL BIRON (4th District, Iloilo) has filed House Bill 3252 to amend some provisions of the Universal and Quality Medicines Act of 2008 – better known as Cheaper Medicines Act – that has been dormant since its implementation during the time of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
The law empowers the President, in collaboration with the Secretary of Health, to regulate medicine prices. Alas, there was only one time in August 2009 when Arroyo cut down prices by half of the country’s 21 most commonly-prescribed branded medicines. For example, Pfizer’s top-selling anti-hypertension drug, Norvasc 10, went down from P75 to P38.50 per tablet. The cut should have been much bigger, Biron lamented; at that time, Norvasc 10 was selling in India and Pakistan at the equivalent of P9 only.
Shortly before she signed the law, the President had met with executives of Pfizer and other multinational drug manufacturers, fueling suspicion that she would be “kind” to them.
In fact, the law has never been effective against the monopoly trade among big players in the drug industry. The Filipino patients remain at the mercy of profit-greedy transnational drug corporations.
Biron could have exposed the collusion between the multinationals and President Arroyo in manipulating the law to favor the Big Pharma. But as a drug manufacturer and drug store owner himself, how could he have done that without losing profitable ties with his own kind?
Another defect in the Cheaper Medicines Law: It has allowed transnational corporations (TNCs) to retain control of 70 percent of the marketing, distribution and pricing of medicines. Their local competitors look like dwarfs in comparison, according to a non-government organization, the Manila-based Consumers Action for Empowerment (CAE).
In fairness to Biron, however, the law was a combination of his bill and the Senate version authored by then senator Mar Roxas. The final law passed by Congress and signed by the President had eliminated the provision creating the multi-sectoral Drug Laboratory Board that would peg affordable prices of medicines.
Since then and throughout the term of her successor, Benigno Simeon Aquino III, and during the first year of incumbent President Rodrigo Duterte, no more presidential intervention on overpriced drugs has been done.
We wonder why Congressman Biron, who claims to be an ally of President Duterte, has failed to remind the latter to exercise his drug-regulatory power. Has the President forgotten to exercise it because he is too focused on his “war” on illegal drugs?
Methinks that Biron, being a probable candidate for governor of Iloilo in 2019, would rather wait for his revived bill to shape into law. It could be his springboard to win that bid.
His House Bill 3252 is actually a reiteration of his original watered-down bill during Arroyo’s time, House Bill 6035.
If passed into law, on top of regulating drug prices, it would penalize small pharmacy owners who refuse to honor the senior citizen’s discount on suggested retail prices of price-cut drugs.
If I may play devil’s advocate, the small pharmacy owners wantonly violate the Cheaper Med Act because they are “victims of connivance” between the big chains of dealers and the drug-manufacturing cartel. The cartel allows only a 10 percent mark-up for small retailers, who therefore find it impractical to give 20 percent discount to senior citizens. The big drug chains, on the other hand, enjoy automatic 20 percent to 30 percent discount, plus additional discounts on big-volume purchases.
If there is nothing in the amendment that would equalize opportunities for both the big and the small druggists, how would the law deliver its promise? (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
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