High French Hospital Spending Hits Local Drugmakers

The soaring annual growth of 11.5% in drug spending by France's public-sector hospitals has benefited US and Swiss multinational drugmakers, to the detriment of French firms, reports the social affairs inspectorate, IGAS.

Broadly speaking, growth in hospital drug spending has been significantly greater than in pharmacies. IGAS says hospital demand for drugs linked to AIDS and transplantation means that companies like Sandoz, Glaxo, Roche, Janssen-Cilag, SmithKline Beecham and Zeneca are favored at the expense of French firms. The biggest-selling drug in the hospital sector in 1994 was Sandoz' Sandimmun (ciclosporin), with sales of 350 million French francs ($69.6 million), followed by Roche's Neupogen (filgrastim) and Glaxo Wellcome's Retrovir (zidovudine).

IGAS indicates that the strict control on social security reimbursement seems to relax where hospital prescriptions are concerned, that the cost of certain products is "exaggerated," and that the monopoly which exists in practice in the sector has negative repercussions on average drug prices and is to the detriment of the national industry. The report also cites cases where, it claims, multinationals used their genuine monopoly-supplier position in relation to one or two drugs to create a monopoly in relation to other products.