Are cheaper drugs to be expected on the market?
The international drug market could start the era of cheap
products after patents of products with tens of billions of dollars
in sales expire, which will allow other producers to launch an
aggressive campaign of lower prices, and thus allow for a decline
in healthcare spending.
Among the products that will lose their patent over the next few
years are Lipitor, produced by Pfizer, the world's best-selling
drug, as well as Plavix, produced by Sanofi-Aventis in
collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb, the world's number two
best-seller.
In Romania local drug producers, which only include generic drugs
in their portfolios, i.e. products that start being manufactured
when the patent of an original drug expires, have launches of tens
of drugs scheduled, which means the international generics fever
will also partly reflect in the Romanian market. The National
Health Insurance House encourages consumption of generics and has
implemented several measures to this effect, after its
representatives said on several occasions that expensive drugs saw
an unjustified rise over the past few years.