05 September 2005
The Ministry of Health is concerned about the misleading comments made by Democratic Alliance MP Dianne Kohler Barnard on the pricing of medicines and would like to invite her to substantiate them.
She claims that there is confusion about the prices of medicine.
Any "confusion" that might be there around the pricing of medicine is due to certain pharmacies insisting on charging administration and other fees to their patients. These actions clearly demonstrate that the private retail pharmacy sector has to be regulated to protect the consumer.
Dianne Kohler Barnard, who is also DA spokesperson on Health, seems to have little understanding of the Minister's statement about medicine price reductions. The Minister said the price of medicine would be reduced by 40-70% when the pricing regulations are implemented. The pricing regulations have not been fully implemented due to the current legal challenges to the regulations.
The manufacturer prices will be reduced over four phases - removal of rebates and discounts, international benchmarking, reference pricing and economic analysis. The first phase of the regulations has been implemented (removal of rebates and discounts) - this has produced a 19% (average) reduction in the ex-manufacturer price of medicines.
The international benchmarking, reference pricing and economic analysis have not been implemented to date (due to the legal challenge). To conclude that the Minister has exaggerated the reduction in medicine prices is therefore premature.
Dianne Kohler Barnard's claim that prices have gone up is odd given that medical schemes that have adhered to the 26%/R26 dispensing fee have reported significant savings on their medicines spend. A recent report into the impact of the medicines pricing regulations on medical schemes (Mediscor Medicines Review 2004) suggests that of the top five therapeutic classes of medicines have been reduced in price by between 12% and 27%.
We challenge Dianne Kohler Barnard to publicly list all the "many drugs" that she claims have gone up in price since the introduction of the medicine pricing regulations.
We cannot allow the DA to continue making irresponsible and cheap political statement about issues that are this critical to the health of our population.
Sibani Mngadi
Spokesperson for the Minister of Health
0827720161