KUCHING: Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii welcomes the Federal Cabinet’s decision to regulate drug prices so that medicine is affordable to all.
In his statement, he said in a Global Medical Trend Rates Report published by international profesasional services consulting firm AON, it was forecast that Malaysia would see a 13.6% medicine inflation rate, almost 5.7 times the country’s median inflation rate.
“According to the Medicine Prices Monitoring 2017 report, the median mark-up for originators and lowest-priced generics retail price in private hospitals is about 51% and 167% respectively while in pharmacies, the numbers are lower – at about 22.4% and 94.7% respectively.
“This shows that the mark-up range can be rather high, and in private hospitals, it is estimated that it can hit up to 117.4% or even 900%. Due to lower cost of these generic drugs, it allows the private hospitals, clinics or even pharmacies to mark up the final selling price and this may see an increase of prices across the board,” Dr Yii explained.
He said he debated in the last parliament session, especially on the government’s intentions to introduce a price control mechanism on medical drugs or a ceiling price to keep the cost of healthcare at a reasonable and competitive level.
“While in principle I am supportive of the move to introduce a price control mechanism, it is also important to understand the complexity of the issue and that such policy implementation will not cause any unintended consequential effects, especially to the smaller clinic and pharmacies.
“That is why it is important that the government is transparent on the mechanism it intends to use, especially in determining the ceiling price for these medications.
“The mechanism has to be transparent to make sure the ceiling price properly reflects the changing economy on top of other factors such as the cost that goes into manufacturer, cost of registration, cost of bioequivalent studies for generic drugs, inflation, budget impact analysis from manufacturer, cost effectiveness analysis from the government per item, and also the GDP and income level of the people,” he pointed out.
Dr Yii also said transparency needed to work both ways – between the manufacturer and the regulators, which in this case, is the government.
“Besides a transparent price control mechanism by the regulators, there has to be better accountability in terms of how profits are derived by the manufacturers from the drugs produced so that a proper ceiling price can be established after considering all the different factors.”
He welcomed the Health Ministry’s decision to seek further feedback and consultations with the pharmaceutical industry to discuss the price control mechanism.
“We must ensure the readiness of the industry, and whether all stakeholders have been engaged and their concerns have been properly listened to.
“The intentions of the ministry is a good step forward, although a holistic understanding of the issue is also important so that the issue at hand can be properly addressed without unintended consequences,” Dr Yii added.-SarawakVoice
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