ARPM at the conference “Current situation on the pharmaceutical market”

The 7th conference “Current situation on the pharmaceutical market” took place in Moscow. The event’s agenda on price formation and compulsory licensing were moderated by ARPM deputy director, Elena Maslovskaya and Advisor to the law firm "Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev and Partners" Denis Gavrilov.

    Opening the session Elena Maslovskaya noted that despite many appeals of producers and the President’s order the issue of potential shortage of medicines from the lowest price segment is still not resolved. Unfortunately, the producers sometimes are faced with a decision of whether to produce products with financial loss or stop the production at all.

    The lack of uniformity in the procurement process and price formation, according to the Executive Director of the SPFO Liliya Titova, leads to the fact that in different regions the prices for the same drug may differ by 2 -2.5 times. One of the ways to ways to fix the situation is to monitor the drug circulation trough special labeling. The pilot project is to be launched next year.

    Head of the Department of Social needs and Trades of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Timophey Nigegorodcev gave manufacturers some recommendations on how to register prices. Particularly, he called upon the applicants to not use the tariff pricing method, which has a number of significant shortcomings and to sue the economic analysis method. A company has an opportunity to decrease the price and reregister it. This recommendation was made based on the inspection which identified 48 drugs with registered prices that were higher than for the same medicines in the refried countries.

    Director on Pharmacoeconomics at “R-Pharm”, Alexandr Bikov spoke about cases of double circulation of expensive medicines. It is common that a medicine that was purchased based on Federal Law 44 in one region appears in a different region with a lower price. 

    An issue of compulsory licensing was also discussed at the meeting. Mr. Nigegorodcev noted that the goal of those who proposed the initiative is not to undermine the intellectual property of producers, but to provide health security to people in Russia. The proposal is based on the international practice where compulsory licensing is only possible if certain requirements are met with accordance to international law.

    Opponents of the motion drew attention to the fact that compulsory licensing must be used only in the event of threats to national security. “It has to be a mechanism which is not aimed to punish producers but to save people’s health,” said Deputy Director of Business Development of Pharmasyntez,  Oleg Astafurov.

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