Split over generic drug pricing in Japan; debate over remedies for low take up

A symposium organized in early October by the Kanto branch of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan, which includes Tokyo and Yokohama, was the occasion for a number of lively exchanges concerning medicines pricing issues between representatives from the Korosho (the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare's Pharmaceutical Affairs and Food Sanitation Council), drugmakers and academics specializing in pharmaceuticals. Although there was general agreement about the policy on patented drugs that the National Health Insurance's Drug Pricing Expert Subcommittee within the Chuikyo (the Central Social Insurance Medical Council) should follow, it was on the topic of what happens at patent expiry that the debate was strongest, according to a report in Pharma Japan.

The Korosho's representatives insisted on the promotion of generic drugs, whereas PSJ members argued that the priority should be to cut the prices of branded compounds when they lost market exclusivity. Soichiro Isobe, the pharmaceutical management director at the Medical Economics Division of the MHLW's Health Insurance Bureau, gave a presentation to the symposium about the Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturer Associations of Japan's proposal that the NIH should maintain patented drug prices until expiry, at which point generic switching should be encouraged (Marketletters passim).

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