Ottawa should prescribe a dose of reform to drive down drug prices
Ottawa’s approach to drug-price reform can be summed up in four words: Delay, delay, delay, delay. The federal government has put off instituting new rules designed to help lower the high costs of pharmaceuticals four times in as many years.
The reforms included a change to which countries Canada compared its prices, giving the regulator access to drugmakers’ confidential data and expanding the criteria by which it can judge a drug’s economic costs and benefits. The amount that Canadians are projected to benefit has likewise been scaled back. In 2019, the Liberals promised Canadians would save $13-billion over a decade; last year that promise was reduced to $2.9-billion.
And the industry’s main lobby group, Innovative Medicines Canada, did itself no favours in 2020 when it suggested that drugmakers mightMr. Duclos has said little about the December decision that the PMPRB pause work on any new rules indefinitely. After the Republicans won the House in the midterms, they have kept at it. A committee is now investigating the lucrative rebates that drugmakers pay to the three companies that control most pharmaceutical purchasing for insurance plans. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission recently estimated that those payments could be artificially inflating drug prices, citing insulin’s tripling of price over nine years.
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