Cheaper medicines bill misses deadline; action vowed in Jan.

REPORT FROM BUSINESSWORLD THE BILL designed to reduce prices of drugs widely used by the public will miss the deadline Wednesday that was set by Executive and Legislative leaders in a meeting on Tuesday last week, amid opposition in the House of Representatives that had doomed the same measure in the same chamber in the last 13th Congress. Congress goes into its Christmas break tomorrow and will resume sessions on Jan. 28 next year. To be sure, the House of Representatives on Tuesday approved House Bill No. 2844 on third and final reading, a day after approving it on second reading. But Sen. Manuel A. Roxas II, chairman of the Senate trade and industry committee who had sponsored the counterpart Senate Bill No. 1658 that hurdled final reading in that chamber last Dec. 5, said in a radio interview on Tuesday that he would rather wait for next year to engage House counterparts in harmonizing their versions, than risk mangling the measure and eroding its intended benefit to the public by rushing the bicameral conference committee meeting just to beat Wednesday’s deadline — as pressed by Speaker Jose C. de Venecia, Jr. in an earlier radio interview on Tuesday. A bicameral conference committee meeting held "just for show," he argued, will not result in a thoroughly debated, well-designed final measure for ratification by both chambers and signing by the President into law. "Ikinalulungkot ko na hindi ito maisasabatas bago pa ang Pasko. Kahit ipasa man ito sa House ngayon o bukas, hindi na ito makaka-bicam at mara-ratify bago mag-break. Huli na masyado [’Sad to say that this measure cannot be approved before Christmas. Even if the House were to approve it Wednesday or tomorrow, the measure cannot hurdle the bicameral conference committee and ratification by both chambers before Congress adjourns for its Christmas break tomorrow. It’s just too late]," Mr. Roxas said in the radio interview right after Mr. De Venecia spoke. "By the time Congress reconvenes, it will be another month Ngunit, ang mahalaga ay maipasa pa rin ito. Mas maganda sana before Christmas, pero kung after Christmas, okey na rin, basta maipasa natin ito [Still, the important thing is that the measure is approved — better before Christmas; but it will still be okay even after Christmas, so long as it is finally enacted into law]," Mr. Roxas stressed. HB 2844’s most contentious provision — expected to be the focus of debates in the bicameral conference committee between the House and the Senate — provides for creation of a Price Regulatory Board that will determine and set the maximum retail prices for medicines. The Senate has rejected this as a useless additional bureaucracy that will slow down proper pricing. In determining the price, the Board will have to consider: - retail prices of the same or similar drugs and medicines in other countries; - availability in the market; - manufacturing, importing, trading, and distributing costs; - peso exchange rate to the dollar; - change in the amortization of the cost of machinery used for drug production; - cost of labor by drug company workers brought about by change in minimum wage; - change in the cost of transporting or distributing drugs to the area of destination; as well as other factors that will aid in arriving to achieve a reasonable maximum price. The Board will be composed of the Secretary of Health as chairman, the Trade and Industry secretary, the Bureau of Food and Drugs director, the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation president, a faculty member from a health sciences school, and two representatives from the consumers’ sector. As with the Senate bill, the House version seeks to prevent drug firms from extending or renewing their patents simply by discovering "new uses," and allows the government to grant licenses to produce vital medicines in times of public health emergencies such as bird flu and AIDS. The House version also makes it illegal to prescribe brand names even for "innovative drugs," in a bid to strengthen enforcement of the generic drugs law. Moreover, there should be no discrimination in drug store shelves between branded and imported drugs. The House and Senate versions agree on removing restrictions to parallel importation, by which drugs that cost cheaper abroad can be brought into the country. — A. K. K. Austria and CSSV/BUSINESSWORLD