key aspects of its proposed plan to cut the cost of patented drugs, it looked like a truce had finally prevailed in the five-year long war between the pharmaceutical industry and the regulatory body that sets maximum prices for brand-name drugs in Canada.
The move has put the industry back on the warpath. It is calling on Mr. Duclos to scrap the new guidelines, which are set to take effect on Jan. 1, even though the PMPRB itself is in disarray. The body’s chairperson left more than a year ago, without being replaced. The agency’s vice-chairperson in turn resigned last week, leaving two empty seats on the regulatory body’s five-seat board of directors.
The reform effort began in 2017, when then Liberal health minister Jane Philpott tabled proposed new PMPRB regulations aimed at reducing patented medicine prices, in part to lay the groundwork for a national pharmacare program. But little consideration was given to the potential unintended consequences of the new regulations. And major sections of the reform plan werelast year by the Quebec Court of Appeal, which concluded the proposed changes exceeded Ottawa’s authority.
The draft guidelines tabled in October were widely seen as an attempt by the PMPRB to achieve by the back door what the court had determined it could not do by the front door, that is, to broadly regulate drug prices. Under the Constitution, the provinces alone have the authority to regulate prices by virtue of their jurisdiction over property and civil matters. Ottawa oversees patents, but its authority over pricing is limited to cases where a patent holder abuses its monopoly power.
I have full support and will vote for the war to continue on the pharma and other privatizing forces on healthcare.
Trudeau doesn’t want Canada to prosper
The industry deserves it.
More corporate propaganda 🙄 legacy media isn’t even trying to hide its role as a marketing arm for big pharma anymore..
Corporate propaganda from corporate propagandists about our rigged economy dominated by psychotic multinationals and sociopathic CEOs.