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Watering down the cheaper medicines bill

BACKBENCHER

Rod. P. Kapunan

04/29/2008

Filipinos must by now wake up to the painful truth that the majority of the candidates they elected in the House and in the Senate are not working for their interest. Many owe their loyalty to those various interest groups, such as the all-powerful pharmaceutical firms, that may have financed their candidacy and gave them the clincher to win under our corrupt electoral system. If they were not initially funded by these lobby groups that see in every bill as something that can be denominated in money, by force of circumstances they easily succumb to the intense pressures that they now act to protect the interest of these drug companies that will be affected by the proposed pro-poor and pro-people bill for fear of being targeted for vilification that would have with it the bitter price of defeat.

This is exactly what happened to the proposed “cheaper medicines bill”; that although the two versions have finally been merged by the bicameral conference committee, the stooges of this well-funded lobby group managed to make a last-minute revision by completely watering down the bill. Thus, when the proposed bill is finally signed into law by Mrs. Gloria Arroyo she would in effect be signing a dead law because it died even before it came into being. For this reason, Speaker Prospero Nograles was correct in wanting to have the bill suspended from being ratified because they would practically be giving nothing as “gift to the Filipino workers on Labor Day.” As anticipated, the people would have no interest in the law that Congress may pass, but only on the effect of that law on them; that it should always be favorable to their interest as taxpayers and the ones bankrolling the operational expenses of their representatives.

There were three important aspects of the bill we can say would give it a real bite. They include the right to allow the importation of medicines from countries that manufacture them at cheaper prices sometimes known as collateral importation, if those imported medicines are locally manufactured and distributed by the same drug companies that export them; to make it mandatory for doctors to prescribe the generic name of the medicine or at the least write alongside it the commercial brand, thus giving the patient the option which to buy; and, that the prices of medicines have to be regulated or, at the least, there has to be an agency that would regulate the price of every medicine sold in the market. All these aspects that originally were incorporated in the bill were intended not only to bring down the prices of medicines, taking into account their return of investment and profit, but principally to regulate, not equalize, the playing field because they involve public interest, in particular the health and wellbeing of our people, especially the poor who could hardly afford to buy commercially branded medicines.

With the cheaper medicines bill now defanged, there is nothing our poor people can expect from it. Many of them hoped that the bill would give them the opportunity to buy cheaper medicines in lieu of their inability to enjoy the luxury of being treated in a hospital. It is this kind of consolation our people now need most. But how could they have their last dream happen when practically doctors look up to these multinational drug companies for patronage to pay for their travel abroad in the guise of attending commercially-oriented medical seminars? Can these profit-oriented doctors have the heart and the soul to treat poor but dying patients by at least prescribing the generic equivalent of those medicines without fear of losing those privileges accorded to them by drug companies? But it is they who spread the rumor that generic medicines are of inferior quality which have the effect of wholly discrediting any attempt by local drug companies to establish their own manufacturing base.

Worse, when senators like Manuel “Mar” Roxas and Pia Cayetano attempted to sponsor their version, their motive was apparently to cover their true color as anti-people senators. It turned out they were the ones actively campaigning to have the provision creating an agency to regulate the price of medicines deleted. Maybe Makati Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. was correct in his accusation that some corrupt senators are in the pocket of drug companies because they would not have the nerve to water down the final version of the bill.

The funny thing is that Senator Roxas who has been making the rounds in the country’s public market trying to examine the prices of basic commodities turned out to be the one fighting against bill that would reduce the prices of medicines. Now he is doing everything to become President. In fact, it was the same cabal of anti-people senators who proposed to limit only to 20 the number of commonly used medicines whose prices are five to 10 times higher than those produced in countries that export them should be the subject of regulation. One need not know the reason the two Iloilo congressmen, Ferjenel Biron and Janette Garin are furious. If memory serves, it was also this Mr. Gimmick who tried to insert the intellectual property law in the proposed bill when the bill never sought to violate any patent right of the drug companies but just sought to legalize the importation of medicines manufactured by the same drug companies based in other countries. Maybe they thought this country is inhabited by nincompoops.

(E-mail: rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)