Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
This is the beauty of the "Buy Canadian" movement in drugs. What will eventually happen isn't a meaningful reduction in our prices, but a boost in Canadian prices. Our prices will go down somewhat, eventually, simply because of the resultant price boost elsewhere, but they will make those profits somewhere.
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I don't think the companies have the ability to raise prices in Canada. For pharmceuticals, these drugs are dirt cheap to manufacture. And if you don't have a patent to protect your market, someone can make your drug for very little cost. The Canadians have a Patented Medicines Prices Review Board that sets the prices of patented medicines. The patentee's choice is to either sell at the price that it is told to sell at, or refuse to sell, in which case a compulsory license can be issued to a generic manufacturer.
Canada used to routinely issue the compulsory licenses, but that changed a bit in 1993. Now they set the price and won't issue the compulsory license unless the pharma company rejects the price and refuses to sell.
So the companies cannot raise the prices in Canada. At least not without permission of the PMPRB.
