Canada’s drug pricing agency is pushing ahead with new regulations aimed at lowering the costs of medications.
Last August, Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB) passed new regulations for medicines under patent protection despite heavy lobbying from drug makers that stand to lose billions in revenue from the change. Now, Ottawa is implementing the new rules base Canadian drug prices on those from a group of countries with lower prices than the benchmark group currently used to set price ceilings. The federal regulator will also now review new medicines based on cost effectiveness.
The response from industry has been swift and negative. Swiss drug maker Roche has withdrawn its immunotherapy Tecentriq from evaluation as a treatment for breast cancer, citing "significant uncertainty and complexity" around the new regulation. Merck & Co said it would cut 145 jobs in Canada, 30% of its staff in this country, blaming the new policy.
The Canadian reforms have drawn outsized industry attention over fears that lower prices could spill into its most lucrative market, the United States, where policymakers have floated importing less expensive Canadian drugs or basing some prices on drug costs in other countries, including Canada.
The PMPRB says companies are likely to be given an 18-month grace period to comply with parts of the regulation, and that cost-effectiveness measures may be applied to fewer treatments. The PMPRB further said that threats by companies to pull products when faced with price controls in Germany in 2011 led to few withdrawals.
