| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| New law will cut medication prices by up to 20% in Spain |
| 2005-06-10 |
| How do you reduce costs? by legislation, of course - since your country doesn't PRODUCE the drugs, you don't lose out at all. A new law to cut the price of medication could save the country as much as EUR 1.4 billion, the health minister claimed. Elena Salgado told the Spanish parliament the new law will save EUR 1.48 billion over three years. The law is expected to come in to practice at the start of next year. The Law of Guarantees and Rational Use of Medication and Health Products will cut the price of drugs sold in chemists. This will mean a 20 percent reduction in the price of many drugs which have been on the market for more than ten years. These drugs must have a generic equivalent a opposed to the brand name. Many people prefer to use chemists instead of going to doctors in Spain. But the Socialists want to cut the price of drugs as many prescription drugs have to be refunded by the health department. This will encourage people to have the generic, not the brand drug, which should be cheaper. |
| Posted by:too true |
| #8 National Medical Insurance is easy, I need cheap auto insurance because ima not all that good a driver and my camarobirds tend to shoot away without any warning. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-10 19:05 |
| #7 Hey, why not cut the prices by 80%? I mean, since there's no downside to this. Gosh, this governing thing is easy! Why didn't we think of this sooner? |
| Posted by: BH 2005-06-10 13:15 |
| #6 Therefore we should immediately knock down any bans on buying medication overseas. Outsourcing socialism... |
| Posted by: eLarson 2005-06-10 12:22 |
| #5 Drug companies are Companies not charitable institutions. Generic drug manufacturers don't develope, test,research or incur any of the very expensive aspects of inventing a drug and getting it in your medicine cabinet. They just suck the gravy off the achievements of others. I have nothing to do with the pharmacology industry so I'm not grinding an axe here, but fair is fair. Unless you want to subsidize them and make the liberals squeal like pigs, you have to let the poor bastards make a buck or two for their stock holders. There just isn't any other way around it. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-06-10 12:13 |
| #4 Unfortunately, the US will probably be forced to institute price controls because of the free rider problem. The 4-5% of the world population in the US won't subsidize the rest of the world forever when medicines are taking up ever larger percentages of US health care budgets and development cost of new drugs are approaching $1 billion. Instead, price controls based on an average of selected countries' prices will probably be implemented. I think a higher price should be allowed if R&D and manufacturing is done in this country. |
| Posted by: ed 2005-06-10 11:40 |
| #3 We can't do that, D_A_P, unless we withdraw from all the international agreements we made in the 90s. Under the rules set up along with the WTO and the World Intellectual Property Org. if a company refuses to sell its products in a country the country can abrogate its patents and produce the product itself without royalties. We agreed to that in order to get some countries to at least begin to protected patented knowhow. |
| Posted by: rkb 2005-06-10 11:23 |
| #2 The companies that make drugs won't stop because the marginal cost of a pill is almost zero. As long as they're making a marginal profit they will sell to all these countries that legislate prices. The R&D cost is recovered in the US since we don't legislate drug prices. Yup, that's right fellow americans...we're subsidizing the rest of the worlds drugs so they can buy them on the cheap and we pay through the nose. When more americans wake up to this fact they'll demand change. All we have to do is tell drug companies that if they sell a drug for cheaper in another country due to gov't regulation they are not allowed to sell the drug in the US. They'll stop selling to the rest of the world overnight to continue making the real money in the US and the other countries will stop illegally regulating drug prices, forcing us to subsidize their health industries or they'll have to give up access to the drugs themselves. |
| Posted by: Damn_Proud_American 2005-06-10 11:17 |
| #1 Exactly, tt. And when the companies that make them decide to stop making them? Whaddaya do then? Sue? |
| Posted by: eLarson 2005-06-10 10:11 |