Sir, – Anne Nolan of the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (January 14th) signally fails to address the most crucial issue raised by your Economics Editor Dan O’Brien (Business, January 11th): That even after the recent, much-trumpeted, announcement of price reductions, the price of prescription medicines for the Irish consumer and taxpayer will still be more than twice the averaged price paid by French, Spanish, and British, consumers.
Moreover, she fails to mention that the price of “generics” is fixed at virtually the same level as the patented version; that this latter anomaly is unique to Ireland, and that it almost completely negates the economic advantages of encouraging the prescribing of generics.
Ms Nolan contends that prices here “are calculated as an average of prices in nine other EU countries”. They may well be “calculated” on that basis – but at a considerable mark-up on that average. They are not the averaged price of any nine EU countries – even if you include only the nine countries with the most expensive drugs.
Finally, Ms Nolan seems to imply that the pharmaceutical industry might not provide new ground-breaking treatments at an affordable price if steps were taken to reduce the price of other medicines. She might reflect on the fact that if the HSE were paying average EU prices for all its commonly prescribed medicines it would easily be able to afford expensive or ground-breaking treatments and still have millions of euro in change to reinstate some of the services for the old and sick which have recently been withdrawn or curtailed. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – I refer to Dan O’Brien’s article (Business, January 11th) on the scandalous rise in drug costs and cannot understand how Ireland with its €2 billion annual expenditure continues to pay well over the odds for pharmaceutical products .
The Minister for Health congratulated himself recently when he negotiated a €400 million saving on medicines over a three-year period . This averages out at a reduction of €133 million annually or approximately only 7 per cent per annum and this saving has yet to be achieved .
I am prescribed one 20mg tablet of cholesterol-reducing medication daily and I returned home from holiday on the weekend with a 12-month supply from Gran Canaria without having to present a prescription there. In a busy upmarket farmacia, the generic Atorvastatina Cinfa 20mg cost me €8.66 while Boots in Dún Laoghaire charges €26.85 for the generic Torvacol 20mg for a month’s supply.
The cost in Playa del Ingles is 32 per cent of the Dún Laoghaire price or in other words there is a saving of 68 per cent by buying abroad .
If I can find an almost 70 per cent reduction in cost in one medicine by accident, how can our Government not strike a far better deal on our behalf with our huge spending power of €2 billion annually (which must surely be doubled when those of us who have to pay for medicines without subsidy are included as well)?
How can we allow such wasteful spending to continue while draconian cutbacks are in force across the board and every citizen in the land is finding their disposable income being eroded from all angles by the austerity budgets. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Anne Nolan (Opinion, January 14th) makes several points regarding the high costs of medicines in the Republic. Some of these may be valid, some obscure and some go over my head. What I do know is that a month’s supply of a generic cholesterol drug here in the Midlands costs €54; in a pharmacy 40 miles north of here in Fermanagh the same drug costs me £7.
This country is like a large furniture factory, somewhere something is constantly getting screwed. – Yours, etc,