DUNAS. BENGKEL ON DRUG PRICING AND RE-IMBURSEMENT. 11-12TH nOV 2013.1

I spend Monday ( after my morning clinic, and Tuesday ( 11th - 12 th Nov 2013 ) at Avillion Admiral Cove, participating in the DUNAS Bengkel on Drug Pricing for the private sector in Malaysia. 

Anyway, the following is a gist of the discussions.

Referencing Pricing and Re-imbursement.

At the onset, I took the position that Reference pricing should be for the Public sector and that Private sector pricing should be left to market forces. The government may choose to set guidelines but market must be allowed to function as free market.

However, they continue to go ahead with the discussions on pricing and referencing.

At the end of the session, I proposed a motion that the pricing of drugs should be left to the market and that government should not interfere  except to set guidelines.

This motion was carried almost unanimously

This section actually does not concern us.

The next item was to develop a code of Good Pharmaceutical Marketing Practice. This was not announced originally.

Good Pharmaceutical Marketing Practice.

I can sense that the “community Pharmacist was pushing for it. Their two contentious issues were

1.       Bonusing and special pricing given to GPs and some pharmacy.

2.       The issue of the “runners”

3.       The issue of unethical behaviour of pahrmas to give “incentives “ to doctors.

1.       Bonusing

          I took the position again that this should be left to the pharma company and we should not interfere. This was carried

2.       Runners

                  I ask Pharmacy division head if there are laws against this, and have runners broken the law. She said yes. I then say, that there is no need to discuss, just throw the book at these people. Make new rules is not going to help.

3.       Unethical inducement to doctors.

I asked if there were code of conduct amongst pharma organisation on this. Head of Pharmacy say yes, but some pharma organisation do not have such ethical code. I then suggested that the Ministry should consider NOT dealing with pharma organisation that does not have an ethical code of behaviour.

It is quite obvious to me that all this is in line with 1Care. To ask us to help fix prices for re-imbursement.

Also the community pharmacist is rather aggressive in trying to get the same prices as GPs. It looks like for them, t is a rice bowl issue

                                                                The discussion team.