Cheap stunts

There has been so much obfuscation among members of Congress over what have stalled their approval into law of the “Cheaper Medicine” bill. This proposed legislation has been pending in Congress for the last 10 years. The bill finally made it through when both chambers of Congress ratified yesterday the consolidated version of the proposed law entitled: “Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicines Act of 2008.”

The soon-to-become law was one of the first bills that Senator Mar Roxas II filed during his first term in office. The Senate version of this bill included the parallel importation of patented medicines from other countries where these are more affordable. This is a pet project that Roxas initiated when he first served as secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry  during the term of deposed President Joseph Estrada. He continued with this program also after being re-appointed by President Arroyo as her DTI Secretary. A multinational drug company even brought him to court for importing cheaper medicines to be sold at government-owned barangay drug outlets.

A similar lawsuit was filed against former Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC) chief, Roberto “Obet” Pagdanganan who continued with this parallel importation program started by Roxas. The PITC is one of the attached agencies of the DTI through which the parallel importation of drugs and medicine was being implemented by the government.  

At last, after almost a decade, Roxas succeeded to shepherd the approval of his pet bill when the Senate and the House of Representatives separately ratified the bicameral conference committee report. In a statement he issued yesterday, Roxas said, this new law would help ensure the availability of affordable medicines by requiring drug outlets to carry a variety of brands for each drug — including those sourced from “parallel importation”—to give the consumer more choices.

Aside from parallel importation of patented medicines from other countries, this will strengthen competition by amending the Intellectual Property Code to prohibit the grant of new patents based only on newly-discovered uses of a known drug substance; allow local generics firms to test, produce and register their generic versions of patented drugs, so these can be sold right upon patent expiry; and, allow the government use of patented drugs when the public interest is at stake.

Actually, the Senate first approved this bill during the 13th Congress. But the Senate’s Cheaper Medicine bill died a natural death when their colleagues in Congress adjourned without acting on the House counterpart bill. The Cheaper Medicine bill did not see the light of day along with several other proposed legislations that President Arroyo certified as urgent under the common legislative agenda forged between Malacañang Palace and leaders of Congress headed by Senate president Manny Villar and then Speaker Jose de Venecia.

During last week’s meeting at the Palace of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC), the President, Villar, Speaker Prospero Nograles and key leaders of both chambers of Congress again agreed anew to the immediate enactment of the Cheaper Medicine bill. When everything was supposed to have been ironed out on the differing provisions of the Senate and the House versions of the bill, hell broke loose again over the final draft that was allegedly watered down by the Senators.

The House bicam panel blamed their Senate counterparts for causing the latest impasse when they removed the drug price regulatory board in the House version. Iloilo Rep. Ferjenel Biron, the principal author of the House version of the bill, protested last week the draft committee that replaced the drug price regulatory board with a provision giving the President the power to regulate the cost of medicines on the recommendation of the secretary of the Department of Health.

The DOH added to the confusion when they insisted to include a “generics only provision.” The provision requires doctors to prescribe only the generic names of drugs instead of the brand name of medicines. It took the President’s intervention to break this impasse when she ordered the DOH to withdraw this proposed provision. Really, there is no sense to include this provision when this could very well be introduced as a separate bill as a proposed amendment to the existing Generics Law.

Biron and the other members of the House contingent, however, still threatened to sit on the bill anew if the provision on price regulation would not be restored. Without the drug price regulatory board, they argued the Senate’s version has weakened the very essence of the bill that seeks to make medicines more affordable at cheaper prices.

Roxas stood his grounds on obvious last ditch attempts to derail the passage into law of this proposed bill. I completely agree with Roxas that the creation of such board is unnecessary because it would only create a new bureaucracy and would only be additional cost to the government with its required annual budget. Certainly, it would not bring about cheaper medicines.

In the first place, the title of the proposed law gives so much false hopes that it would immediately result to substantial reduction of the prices of medicines and other prescription drugs. What we have are only cheap stunts by certain members of Congress out to score brownie points. We are being given an abundant supply of such cheap stunts that do not improve our lives.      

If our lawmakers really want to ensure the availability of cheaper medicines, they should simply amend the law that raised to 12 percent the value added tax that took away more than half of the 20 percent discount being given to our senior citizens. Life-saving and life-extending drugs and medicines should, in fact, be exempted from VAT. The impact of such VAT exemption, for sure, would result to cheaper priced prescription drugs and medicines. But of course, it would not be a cheap gimmick for someone with moist eyes on the 2010 presidential elections to advocate it.