NEWS RELEASE August 9, 2019

Health Policy Activists Applaud PMPRB Reforms

As longtime health policy activists and representatives of patient organizations, we applaud the Minister of Health, the Honorable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, for moving ahead with needed reforms to Canada’s pricing system for prescription drugs still under patent. These bold steps will go a long way towards making needed medicines accessible to patients.

We particularly welcome two reforms: the new basket of comparator countries the Patented Medicines Price Review Board (PMPRB) uses to set drug prices in Canada, and the end to secret deals that blindfolded the price regulator from seeing actual market prices.

Until now, the PMPRB has compared Canada’s drug prices with seven countries, four of which have the most expensive drugs in the developed world, most notably the United States, which has no mechanisms whatsoever for limiting drug prices. These comparator countries undermine the Board’s ability to set prices that are in line with Canada’s economy and health policy.

The PMPRB has also had to rely on artificially high prices published by manufacturers — who then offered secret deals to insurers with the greatest bargaining power. That blocked the Board from setting a fair price for drugs under patent.

“Canada has the second-highest drug prices within the OECD,” said Colleen Fuller, a health researcher who co-founded Pharmawatch Canada and the Society for Diabetic Rights.  “We are really pleased to see that the Price Review Board will be able to assess value-for- money based on the actual price paid at the cash register, rather than the industry’s inflated numbers,” said Jennifer Beeman, Executive Director of Breast Cancer Action Quebec.. “One reason is that we compare ourselves to a basket of seven countries that includes nations with some of the highest drug prices in the world. The comparator countries announced today are more realistic. They have health care systems and levels of investment from the pharmaceutical industry that are similar to Canada’s.”

The group believes that a stronger price review system is essential to a National Pharmacare program that will help align Canada’s drug prices with every other developed country that has a universal health care system.

“One of the most important things we heard today,” said Cheryl-Anne Simoneau, founder of the Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) Society of Canada and a leukemia patient, “is that the government sees these reforms as a building block for National Pharmacare.”

Despite widespread suffering by patients, these changes have been stalled for months because the pharmaceutical industry has opposed them. “The government is the guardian of the public’s health,” says Sharon Batt, an adjunct professor at Dalhousie University whose experience as a cancer patient informs her research. “It’s encouraging to see the government stand up to an industry that for too long has put profits ahead of patients’ needs.”

Contacts:
Colleen Fuller, 604-441-6296; colleenfuller3@me.com
Cheryl-Anne Simoneau: 514-239-5488; cheryl.simoneau@cmlsociety.org                                  Jennifer Beeman, 514-575-3236; jennifer.beeman@acsqc.ca
Sharon Batt, 902-423-4679; sharon.batt@dal.ca