Drug Bill 2: Did the cat rip off with the rattle?

The price and availability of medicines is the nightmare of Chileans, of course, if 90% of their cost is assumed by the patient or his family, and only 10% by the health system, which is aggravated by greedy practices in the pharmaceutical industry, laboratories and pharmacies, which take advantage of the lack of rules that prevent abuses and excesses. Abuses that can be legal or illegal, as was the notorious Farmacias case of 2008, where three controlling companies of the pharmaceutical market (Ahumada, Cruz Verde and Salcobrand) colluded to fix drug prices.
In this context, in 2015 a bill was presented, an initiative of Senators Girardi, Goic, Ossandón, Rossi and Zaldívar, highlighting that “the entire market for medicines, that is, pharmacies, distributors, laboratories, doctors and dependent on the sale in pharmacies, participate in an industry that operates in conditions that tend to collusion and abuse of dominant position at all levels of the production chain”.
This project seeks to improve the practices of the industry ranging from the laboratory that produces them to the pharmacy that sells them, bearing in mind that the rules of free competition are not enough to address the problems that violate fundamental human rights such as health and life of people, as well as the right to a dignified life.
Although the bill does not address the problem of lack of health insurance, or the necessary increase in state coverage of the price of medicines, the project is a contribution in that it establishes a system of maximum pricing, inspired by the systems that are the norm in advanced countries.
To this end, it seeks to create a National Observatory of Medicines in charge of the Undersecretariat of Public Health, to analyze the costs and expenses of drugs compared to the international market. Also, to protect patients, it will regulate the labeling and naming of medicines, seeking to avoid the overpricing of branded generic products and advertising to induce the consumption of a drug, and within what is more interesting for this columnist specialized in intellectual property, than whoever applies for a patent on a new drug, It must indicate the international name of the active ingredient on which the monopoly will be granted, making the system transparent.
Equally important, Chile would recognize the government’s use of a pharmaceutical patent, which would allow, in case of health need or other emergency, that, for example, the Ministry of Health expeditiously authorizes the importation of a generic or biosimilar drug, or authorizes its national manufacture. This power of government use, remember, has been used extensively by the U.S. to produce vaccines and other technologies.
The project also includes a necessary regulation on the sale of medicines through digital platforms by authorized establishments, thus increasing availability and competition.
This legal initiative, after seven years of processing, in which all interested sectors participated and were heard, including pharmacies, patients, national and foreign laboratories, went through the committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, including a Joint Commission of deputies and senators, which approved a consensus text. After being approved in the Joint Commission, and only when the final vote was missing in the plenary of the Senate and the House, the project stopped advancing and today is in a stalemate in Congress, despite the fact that in May it was given urgency by President Boric.

Why is it not sent to the Chamber for final dispatch, or does the Joint Health Commission meet to finish what has to end? (He hasn’t seen this issue for months.) Let’s hope that, in this important and relevant issue for the entire population, the cat does not start with the rattle.

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Original source in Spanish