Canada: New Drug Prices Slammed

New drugs in Canada "often have unjustifiably high price tags,"according to a confidential report prepared for the parliamentary review of the C-91 drug patent legislation, which is due to be completed this month.

Author Morris Barer, director of the University of British Columbia's Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, says that despite brand-name drugmakers' claims that they need full patent protection in order to conduct R&D, most of this is done outside Canada. So the availability of new drugs in Canada is independent of the level of research done there.

Also, he says, while the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board has kept existing drug prices within rises in inflation, it has not done so for new drugs. "It is not obvious that cost control results from having Canadian introductory prices in line with" the seven industrialized countries used as references, says Dr Barer.