Experts Lounge
Lessons Kenya can learn from the recent US pharma price hikes
By Dr Reuben Sigey
Heated debates are ongoing in the world’ s super power, US over the sudden increase in prices of old offpatent drugs by very high percentages.
US presidential aspirant, Hillary Clinton already took a stand last September offering a plan to protect Americans from unjustified price hikes in lifesaving treatments that have long been on the market.
She believes that the time is ripe for the conversation to move away from mere talk but real talk in addressing the choking issue.
Global spending on medicine is expected to touch the Sh131 trillion($ 1.3 trillion) mark by 2018, an increase of 30 per cent compared to 2013. Global sales in 2013 was Sh100trillion($ 989 billion).
The lucrative US market is projected to be worth about Sh43.8trillion($ 433.33 billion) in two years’ time.
Pharmaceutical products are core to the functioning of any healthcare system. This is because they form a critical component of many treatment interventions.
From the industry’ s perspective, availability and access is key, in which case affordability becomes a critical factor.
It is no wonder then that the issue of drug prices generates a lot of interest and emotions, with various parties including patients, doctors, politicians and pharmaceutical companies defending preferred positions in an effort to tip the scale in their favor.
In this way, pharmaceutical pricing has become a political issue; this, particularly, has been observed in markets where there is no control on pricing, a perfect example being the US, where pharmaceutical companies are free to set the market prices.
8 November-December 2016