The government has been effective in implementing bulk procurement to bring down medicine prices.

Government hospitals sell among the cheapest medicines in the country and should be made a major outlet to help more people, the pharmaceutical industry said.

“The Department of Health (DoH) should consider making these hospitals as a major outlet of medicines. We have been making medicines available to the government at very low prices through bulk procurement and we are committed to keep doing this,” said Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Association of the Philippines (PHAP) executive director Teodoro Padilla.

The government has been effective in implementing bulk procurement to bring down medicine prices. Under the Universal Healthcare Act signed by President Rodrigo Duterte earlier this year, bulk procurement and price negotiation with pharmaceutical companies are important provisions that must be maximized and expanded to lower medicine prices.

In a comparison of prices by the DoH Drug Price Reference Index (DPRI), prices of medicines drastically dropped when a government hospital purchased medicines in bulk or in volume. The DoH-DRPI data showed that the price of a breast cancer medicine took a nosedive from P38,372 per vial for 100 units to P13,000 per vial for 6,100 units, representing a 66.12 percent price reduction.

For maintenance medicines, Padilla said an anti-cholesterol tablet sells in a government hospital for only P0.35 but sells for as high as P71.55 in private hospitals and P33.75 in retail outlets; P0.19 per tablet against high blood pressure compared to as high as P38.50 outside; and a tablet for diabetes at P0.56 compared to many times higher outside. The availability of low-priced medicines in government hospitals give patients an option either to buy in public or private pharmacies.

“The list could go on. Our point is that price reduction has been happening and the benefits could be expanded. The solution is the UHC Act, not price control. Price control shifts the burden of buying medicines back to the individual Filipino patients even when more recent landmark laws have provisions to make medicines finally be available and accessible to all,” Padilla said.

Signed by President Duterte in February 2019, both the UHC Act and the Cancer Control Act provide for mechanisms to lower medicine prices, and even provide them for free. These are (1) bulk or pooled procurement, (2) price negotiations, (3) expanded medicine benefits, (4) early access to innovative medicines, (5) special access scheme from the private sector, and (6) health technology assessment.