German BPI Opposes VFA Drug Market Plan

The German pharmaceutical industry association, the BPI, has opposed the promotion by the rival association of research-based drug firms, the VFA, for a tripartite division of the German drug market. The VFA recommends that vital medicines, mainly new and innovative products, should be fully reimbursed by the health funds, while "controversial" drug products should be partially reimbursed and the remainder excluded from reimbursement altogether.

The VFA's case is that if modern drugs prove inadequate to finance pharmaceutical R&D, the capacity of the industry to innovate will be weakened.

BPI president Hans Rudiger Vogel said this is the wrong way to approach the market, and asked what would happen if most drugs prescribed in the course of daily medical treatment were no longer covered by reimbursement. Claiming that patients would be given the impression that their illnesses were trivial, he said that while "a clear yes or no" rarely obtains in the inexact science of medicine, "there are no banalities." Faced with widespread exclusion of groups of drugs from reimbursement, doctors would move to prescribing newer, highly-effective and costly drugs.