European pharma wholesalers argue for freedom of ex-factory pricing
The European Association of Pharmaceutical Full-Line Wholesalers (GIRP) is urging the European Commission's pharmaceutical forum to give the pharma industry the freedom to fix its own factory gate prices.
The European Association of Pharmaceutical Full-Line Wholesalers (GIRP) is urging the European Commission's pharmaceutical forum to give the pharma industry the freedom to fix its own factory gate prices.
The forum brings together representatives from the European Commission and Parliament, member states and other players such as the pharma industry, generics manufacturers and wholesalers, to try to move forward on certain questions relating to medicines in Europe.
The GIRP is a member of two of the working groups - medicines pricing and patient information - in the forum, which was launched in November 2005 by European industry commissioner Guenter Verheugen.
According to GIRP president Rene Jenny, the GIRP hopes that the forum's work will lead to the development of a single market for products authorised by centralised procedure. "Products with European authorisation should be allowed to be distributed Europe-wide without additional authorisations," he said.
A prerequisite of this would be that decisions on product pricing should be clearly separated from those on reimbursement; reimbursement questions would still be negotiated with national governments. The next step would be to allow products approved by centralised procedure to be traded throughout Europe immediately after their marketing authorisation, continued GIRP secretary-general Monika Derecque-Pois.
The GIRP also proposes the creation of Europe-wide packaging, or at least multi-country packages. "The advantage will be immediate market access of all European citizens to the most innovative medicines," Jenny said.
Swiss group Novartis's head of global policy, Fritz Brett, was in favour of such a system, which he considered preferable to a possible future single European price. "A single [European] high price followed by a rebate paid back to the State would be an additional tax on turnover or even on patients...I don't see any politician using that," he said.
"It is a much better concept to go to the European/multi-country package."