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Updated, 11:50
THE HEAD of the HSE’s new national drug purchasing programme has admitted it is “difficult” to defend the prices that Ireland is paying for generic drugs, compared to our geographical neighbours.
Prof Michael Barry was responding to a report by the Sunday Business Post which underlined that the HSE can pay up to 24 times more for generic drugs than Britain’s NHS.
Susan Mitchell’s research showed that the Irish taxpayer pays €99.89 for olanzapine – a drug to treat bipolar disorder better known as Zyprexa, manufactured by Eli Lilly – while the NHS pays just £3.54, the equivalent of €4.10.
Barry, who was appointed to lead the new management programme three months ago, told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that it “isn’t right” that Ireland was paying so much more for generic drugs than Britain was.
“It’s very difficult to defend this situation,” he said, saying there had not been “an effective generic drugs market in this country for many, many years”.
He said:
The price of generic medicines should be anywhere between 50 per cent and 90 per cent below the proprietary drug price, so it’s impossible to defend this.
Barry further added that the price for generic drugs was set through negotiation, and “clearly it hasn’t been possible to negotiate with the generic manufacturers”.
He said the Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Bill 2012, which is currently making its way through the Oireachtas, would address the issue by allowing the HSE to introduce ‘reference pricing’ for drugs which it considered to be “interchangeable”.
This would give the HSE the power to negotiate more firmly with drug companies by threatening to strike a deal with the supplier of another, cheaper alternative version of a drug.
That legislation has been cleared by the Seanad and passed second stage in the Dáil in December. It is due to be debated by the Oireachtas health committee in two weeks’ time.
“With healthcare expenditure on medicines heading again to €2 billion in 2013,” Barry said, “I don’t think we have any choice but to tackle this area.”
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You’d have to come to the conclusion that either those doing the negotiating are incompetent or there are vested interests within the Irish camp who just don’t want any form of negotiating taking place and would prefer to see things remain as they are. Now who would benefit from that?
Incompetent and vested interest by the look of things.
Why, as a wholesale purchaser of drugs, can’t the HSE negotiate with the generic drug manufacturers? This smacks of cosy relations between HSE and large branded drug manufacturers. Perhaps this was ok when the money was there and nobody looking…. different ballgame now. Another example of wastefulness during the “boom” years.
Sorry William, but it was never ok for the HSE to have “cosy relations” with any drug manufacturers, regardless of how much money we had, at the end of the day that’s our taxes they’re spending. It would be cost efficient to go to the UK, Spain etc. and poach the officials they use to do their negotiating with the various drug companies, say for every €500m they save a year, pay them €1m. The gross saving to the state, and taxpayer, €499m, money well spent.
I agree 100% Jedi. Maybe I didn’t layer enough sarcasm on that sentence.
If the NHS could sell to us at a little above cost it would save a lot of trouble.
Lazy, nonchalant attitude of the HSE “ah sure, we’re not paying for it, just pay them whatever they ask for the meds”
Maybe you should read the article again, Anthony. The HSE’s hands seem to be tied by legislation on this matter. Attempts to fix this by introducing the Health Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods Bill 2012 have constantly been delayed by the very government who say they want to fix the issue.
A 50% reduction here should be achieveable, that’s 1 billion saved they could leave nurses pay alone
When you negotiating with someone else’s money no incentive to play hardball.
Nail on the head right there Vincent.
I requested a repeat prescription for four items for (asthma and allergies) from my GP on Wednesday last. When I called in to pick it up on Thursday I had to hand over €40.00 to get it.
I then went to Boots pharmacy to buy the drugs where they cost just over €80.00. This is considerably less than in my local pharmacy, which I can no longer justify paying a premium to support. So, despite my saving on the drugs from Boots, I was still fleeced by my own GP for the privilege of getting my hands on a script to allow me to draw breath daily. This, without even having a consultation with her. Previously a repeat presecription cost me €25.00, but it appears that my GP has a new policy now of €10.00 per item…unless there is some other random formula for calculating this “Repeat Prescription Charge”.
So, it’s not just the pharamceutical companies who are holding people who are dependant on certain drugs entirely to ransom.
You should get a new GP, that’s archaic pricing for a prescription! The Boots model pricing is the cheapest way for expensive medicines, but it can make the cheaper medicines ( i.e Ventolin) more expensive than they should be.
Change GP AGAIN in my case. The majority of them in my experience are only in the business of “health” to profiteer from the sick.
COULD WE NOT GO UP TO THE NORTH AND BRING THE DRUGS BACK DOWN. THAT IS SOME DIFFERENCE.PROB WOOD BE CHEAPER IN SPAIN .
No need to shout.
We are comparing our prices to those in the UK. Apparently the UK prices are far from being the cheapest in Europe. This is the sort of waste and mismanagement in the hse and public services that should be eliminated before they start cutting salaries of the lower paid
Dermot Lane , they are cutting the salaries of those who purchase the drugs at such high prices . What do you want ? Pay them a bonus for it?
Rory not sure what your point is. I’m saying if waste and mismanagement in all levels of the public sector were eliminated there would be less need for pay cuts at the lower levels. Where did I imply a bonus for incompetence ?
This is a bit of a side note really, in principle the Bill is grand. However, with epilepsy medication is a different matter. Neurologists spend years trying to get the balance right in terms of their patients’ medication so that they can become seizure-free. The make-up of the medication is very exact. Those who make a generic form of the drug are allowed a certain (albeit very small) leeway in terms of how much of what ingredient goes in. Even a very small change could cause a person who has been seizure free or who has good control over their seizures to have another one. For some, seizures can be fatal.
In effect then, if the Bill goes through, you could have a situation where a person with epilepsy turns up in their chemist to get their monthly lot of meds, gets given a generic version, thinks nothing of it, takes it, and has a seizure, if not lots of seizures.
Epilepsy Ireland are lobbying for an amendment to this Bill, something to the effect that anti-epileptic medication is excluded. This has been done in UK, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic and Greece, and Denmark, Finland, Germany, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland have excluded many of such drugs from similar bills.
I’m lucky enough to have been seizure free for 9 years. On the flipside, the seizures I did have landed me in a coma and were it not for the fact that I lived close to Hospital I probably would have died. While this makes for a fun, dramatic life/death story at parties, there are people who could end up where I did as a result of this legislation.
Here’s a much better written version of the above: http://www.epilepsy.ie/index.cfm?spKey=genericsubstitution&spId=625AC1A6-F6C5-CF03-55412D3765BEBFC9&highlight=generic%20substitution
Something smells bad somewhere !
We have been promised cuts in drug prices for years and nothing has happened.
FF failed to cut them. Why should this lot do any better?
Brilliant news, but will we get to the place where we are buying drugs at less than half the price we are now? 50% reduction is the minimim reduction acceptable and hopefully we can save a few jobs and reopen a few wards. They really need a culture change. They need to setup a Tesco style procurement team.
Pharmacies in Ireland can only purchase medicines with an Irish Product Authorisation from an Irish wholesaler approved by the Irish Medicines Board. The same medicines are available in the UK with a UK product licence for a fraction of the cost and the only difference might be a few lines on the information leaflet.
The IMB should be stripped of its role in approving every medicine and we should opt in to the UK system. It is an extravagance we can no longer afford and we would instantly have cheaper prices and competition.
I think people are overlooking the fact that the Drug Companyies who manufacture or even warehouse in Ireland have enormous power, and easy access to Government. Looking at the smile of satisfaction on their Representative in the negotiations last year it was easy to see who had come out tops. The plain fact of the matter is that drug companies employ a lot of people here. All the negotiator had to do to the bunch of cowards we call a Government was hint that these companies might upsticks elsewhere if pressure came on them to reduce prices. Result: minimal decreases in the price of a very few out of patent drugs – and the irish people continue to be royally rogered.
A lot of the generic companies in Ireland supply the UK as well and the NHS negotiated pretty well with them. Most of the companies have to ensure they can supply the UK demand before the Irish market. With the UK having a larger population the medicines can be cheaper and they can still make the same profit as here, with a higher cost price.
Nobody think something illegal is going on here….if somebody cost the government the same in damage to their property through corruption or negligence they would be in jail already.
Obviously haven’t heard of LDN (Low Dose Naltrexone) then.
The Irish paying through the nose again, If you want to rip of Irish consumers? Then come to Ireland, for the Gathering!
Give them a break people until we know the full facts.
Maybe it was over-vigilance on the behalf of the HSE negotiators? Personally testing each sample could easily account for the prices paid.
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