Senate inquiry on alleged collusion between doctors and drug firms sought

A proposed resolution calling for a legislative inquiry into the alleged collusion between doctors and pharmaceutical companies for the prescription of branded medicine has been filed in the Senate.

In filing Senate Resolution (SR) No. 1011, Senator JV Ejercito said the alleged collusion violates several laws including the Republic Act (RA) No. 9502 or the Cheaper Medicines Act and the Universal Health Care Law (UHC).

Ejercito said the UHC Law is intended to protect Filipinos against financial risk and reduce the cost of out-of-pocket health expenses and the alleged scheme “may have contributed to the high out-of-pocket medical expenses, therefore contravening the very intent” of the law.

“To maintain the honor and integrity of the medical profession, Congress may initiate reforms through legislative measures to protect the best interests of doctors and their patients from possible abuses, manipulation, and circumvention of laws by pharmaceutical companies,” the proposed resolution reads.

Data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed out of the pocket health expenditures of Filipinos were estimated to be P501.79 billion or around 44.7% of the total P1.12 trillion health expenditures for the year.

Of the figures, over 50% or P251.4 billion of the out-of-pocket expenditures were spent on medicines bought from pharmacies.

Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa on Monday reminded the country's health professionals and personnel that accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for a favor is "unethical."

This comes amid news reports of drug firms allegedly giving privileges to medical professionals and using multi-level marketing schemes to entice them to advertise and prescribe medical products.

Earlier this month, Senator Raffy Tulfo said that some doctors prefer to prescribe branded medicine over generic ones allegedly due to trips sponsored by the pharmaceutical firms.

Herbosa explained that while there is an existing executive order on the use of generic drugs in public hospitals, there are cases when the generic medicines are "not clinically effective."

While he acknowledged that there were "junkets" before, he said that the Philippines has become a signatory to the Mexico City Principles which provide voluntary codes of business ethics in the biopharmaceutical sector.—RF, GMA Integrated News