A look at the cheaper medicines law debate
A few days ago, the entire nation’s attention was drawn to the long-delayed implementation of the Cheaper Medicine Law after Senator Mar Roxas exposed a secret meeting between top executives of giant multi-national phramaceutical companies and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. It wasn’t just a simple meeting. Apparently, it was a last-ditch effort of these giant drug companies to scuttle the implementation of the CML, and this was spiced by a bribe offer of Pfizer, maker of my maintenance drug Norvasc, to the Arroyo administration, said Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. This public indignation over the failure of the President to issue the implementing rules and regulations for CML isn’t surprising — in this country, you either die because of your inability to take prescription meds for your ailments, or you die from shock over the exorbitant prices of these drugs.
On a personal level, I have a stake in this. Each day, I take the following medicines:
- 10-mg Norvasc
- 50/1000-mg Junamet (twice a day)
- 40-mg Pritor plain
- Crestor 10 mg. (for cholesterol)
Even with discount cards, my daily expenditures for these drugs is about P250! That is already more than the daily take-home pay of most Filipino workers. If I weren’t the provincial administrator of Iloilo, I might have died long ago, especially after I suffered a mild stroke in March 2006. It’s a good thing that I simply had to rechannel my beer money to my maintenance drugs. Now I’m as healthy as I can be, with an average blood pressure of 110/70 (believe it or not, I was always on the borderline 130/90 since I came out of college).
There is no argument that the prices of medicines are beyond the reach of ordinary Filipinos, and it is hard to understand why Malacanang hasn’t as yet signed the Executive Order that would compel these drug companies to adhere to price ceilings for their life-saving products. There is already a law, and the people have waited 13 months now for its implementation. With one stroke of her pen, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could make the cheaper medicines law a reality.
But then here comes Congressman Ferjenel Biron (4th District, Iloilo), who response to the public discussion wasn’t on how to persuade the President to stop dilly-dallying on the EO. Rather, Biron rushed to the public arena of debate by blasting at Senator Mar Roxas for pushing for the “wrong” version of the law. This impasse could have been avoided if only Congress adopted his own version of the CML, Biron argued.
It was a shameless of Biron to make that assertion. He still couldn’t think outside of his mind frame as the owner of PharmaWealth Philippines. In his mind, it’s all about advancing his business interests.
As correctly pointed out by Rep. Niel “Jun Jun” Tupas, Jr., the “heart and soul” of the law is price regulation. Biron had wanted to grant this power of price regulation to a board similar to the Energy Regulatory Board, the Road Users Board, Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board, and so on. The Roxas version, which prevailed, placed this power in the hands of the President of the Republic.
The logic was simple: boards are not accountable directly to the people, and vulnerable to lobby pressure from giant pharmaceutical companies.
It’s not too hard to see that Biron, being the owner of a pharmaceutical company, had wanted to create a mechanism that would be favorable to him. The board would have been subject to the oversight powers of Congress, and as Biron is a congressman, Biron would have wielded tremendous powers. This is the reason he fought hard to push for his own version, even spending hundreds of millions of pesos in lobby money. But his self-serving version of the law was defeated by a majority who saw its drawback in terms of accountability and vulnerability to corruption.
With the defeat of the “Biron” version of the cheaper medicines bill, the 4th district congressman lost a fabulous fortune in an era where he could have reigned supreme in the pharmaceutical industry. Billions and billions of pesos slipped through his fingers like sand. Hence, it is understandable why he should be angry at Mar Roxas.
Biron should understand that this is not a time to debate about whether the law is wrong. It’s not even been implemented yet. He should help push for its implementation. This is not about whose version had prevailed. It’s about whether the Filipino people can finally win their freedom from the chokehold of expensive drugs and medicines.
