Dutch Drug Price Act: Nefarma Starts Court Proceedings

The Dutch drug industry association Nefarma has started legal action against the government's drug price control act (WGP; Marketletters passim), which took effect on June 1, 1996, and which Nefarma believes is "squeezing the lifeblood of our industry," says the association's newly-published report for 1995.

The WGP has reduced Dutch drug prices to the average in France, Germany, Belgium and the UK, in a move aimed at saving 700 million guilders ($412.6 million) a year. An alternative savings plan proposed by Nefarma centered on stimulating market forces and differentiated price cuts, permitting innovation because prices of patent-protected drugs would fall much less than off-patent drugs; "we take the view that savings on medicines must be made at the end of the life cycle of the product," it says. Its plan would also have produced a permanent change in the market structure and created a transparent system. However, following government doubts about the returns possible with the plan, despite guarantees given by market operators, it was thrown out.

Dutch Patients "Denied Access To New Drugs" New drugs no longer have access to the market, following the closing of Annex 6 of the Pharmaceutical Care Scheme to them. They may now only be used if they treat conditions which could not have been treated adequately, or at all, at July 1, 1993. Says Nefarma: "it is absurd that genuinely new drugs are not available in the Netherlands," and the law is denying Dutch patients access to treatments for rheumatism, multiple sclerosis, cancer, AIDS, etc. New drugs are too readily seen as an additional cost item, whereas in fact they often have the effect of saving on costs in other sectors of health care.