EU says patients pay £3bn more for medicines after drug firms block sale
of generic versions
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 8:33 PM on 28th November 2008
European patients had to pay some £3 billion more for medicines in
2000-2007 because pharmaceutical companies deliberately stalled the sale
of cheaper generic versions, EU antitrust regulators revealed today.
An investigation of major pharmaceutical companies - including Pfizer
Inc., GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi-Aventis - showed they had blocked or
delayed generic drugs from entering the market to prevent losing revenue
on their more profitable drugs, the European Commission said.
The drug companies used costly legal action to stall generic drug
companies from making their own versions of medicines once patents had
expired, the EU executive said.
It said they launched disputes, lawsuits and multiple patent
applications for the same drug.
In one case, 1,300 applications were filed.
Patent litigation lasted on average three years, and generic companies
won some 60 percent of the cases, the EU said, although it would not
name any specific drugs involved.
Drug companies also struck deals that limited how the generic versions
could be sold, sweetened with payments of more than £200 million from
the drug majors to generic rivals.
All in all, the EU said these tactics stopped a process where a drug's
price typically falls 20 percent in the first year that a generic
version becomes available.
The average delay for the generic drugs to go on sale was seven months,
it said - and cost European health care systems some £3 billion.
The European Union's 27 states spent £200 billion on medicines last
year, or £400 per person. Most of that cost is carried by state health
insurance programs.
EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes told reporters that she hoped
companies would change their ways.
She said: 'This matters greatly because more innovation and more
affordable medicines would mean better lives and savings for patients
... and governments.
She said the EU Commission would not hesitate to launch antitrust cases
against companies that may have violated EU rules - even generic
companies who took money to agree on curbing competition.
The EU is yet to charge any pharmaceutical company formally but
regulators raided the offices of several drug makers in different EU
states on Nov. 24.
Those raids are separate from Friday's report which is an outline of
problems the EU sees in the pharmaceutical sector. A more detailed
follow-up will be published in the
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Friday, 28 November 2008
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