Slow Progress on Ethical Drug Prices in Germany

Recent negotiations between the research-based drug sector and government officials in Germany have failed to create changes to the country's fixed-level price support structure. Much of the conflict arises from the list's grouping of drugs according to active ingredients, which can thus include both generic and potentially innovative versions of particular therapies at differing prices. Further, the multinational sector continues to complain that there are currently no products classified as "innovative" on the list, despite the establishment of a new working group on the issue. Future criteria only envisage genuinely novel products as being exempted from the price support regime.

Meanwhile, in a further gesture that is likely to be well received by the country's health funds and consumers, generic producers have pledged to maintain stable prices until at least year-end 2005. The move comes despite the lifting of a price freeze at the end of 2004. Observers claim that generics have already resulted in substantial savings in health procurement, with further economies likely as a number of important patents expire this year. It now appears that local generics groups such as Pro Generika are unwilling to jeopardise the country's reforms to drug pricing, which the research-based sector claims could result in losses amounting to hundreds of millions of euros.