The Guarantor: more competition is needed
Is the Antitrust right when it affirms that the fiscal link to the 2008 budget law - which is being examined by the Montecitorio this week after its passage to the Senate - "stiffs" the market, protects the "historical quotas" of individual pharmaceutical companies and hinders the growth of generic companies? Or are the Ministers of Health, Livia Turco, and of Economic Development, Pierluigi Bersani, right, who took the field to defend - in a joint message sent to "Il Sole-24 Ore" - a reform of the pharmaceutical sector that takes a decisive step forward towards the construction of a regulatory system that "gives certainties to companies, encourages innovation and promotes competition"? The remote dispute developed last week after the report that the Guarantor sent to the Government and to the presidents of the Chamber and Senate asking to introduce pro-competitive measures in the text of the article of Legislative Decree 159/2007 which outlines the reorganization of the medicines market. With the findings, the Antitrust did not go lightly: the regulation provides for the definition of individual company budgets "proposes, for the years to come, a market structure which largely preserves the current relative positions between companies", at least slowing down the market dynamics between competitors; the share of incremental resources intended to reward the most innovative companies "is still largely in the minority"; finally, the right elements are lacking to "increase the degree of competition between equivalent products (static competition), which in this sector is mainly expressed with the diffusion of generic and parallel imported drugs". Generous both in dispensing criticism and advice, the Guarantor invites the legislator to correct the strategy on the division of resources, encouraging research and innovation, to promote price competition thanks to the activity of generic manufacturers and parallel importers, whose advantages - for Italian consumers and the NHS - remain very limited compared to other EU countries. In the Guarantor's package also the evergreen theme of distribution margins - «a flat-rate remuneration per package sold would give rise to a regressive profile of the margins with respect to the price of the product and could therefore incentivize distributors to market drugs at lower prices, often represented by generic drugs» - and the hope of enhancing the potential in terms of competition and savings of the parallel distribution of products from countries where the regulated price is lower than that fixed in Italy. Clarifications on which the Turco-Bersani pairing does not enter much, preferring to defend the true core of the turning point with swords: "The reform - they write - radically innovates the situation and not only because it gives stability to prices by introducing instead of the price cut, compliance with the ceiling through the pay-back with respect to the budgets contracted with the Italian drug agency". "For the first time - the ministers continue - a portion of significant resources is reserved within the spending ceiling to ensure profitable prices for drugs that incorporate a greater content of research and innovation". And finally "the principle is introduced whereby resources freed up by the drop in price due to the release of a drug patent are reused to reward innovation via price and to ensure room for growth for the generics themselves: in this way it is avoided that those resources are nullified by the practice of shifting consumption towards drugs still covered by patent". On one thing – however – the ministers agree with the Antitrust: «
