infoJustice

[Fifa Rahman and Joel Lexchin, The Malaysia Online, Link] On November 16, 2015 at the launch of the Intellectual Property Rights Index (IPRI) 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, IDEAS Malaysia, a libertarian think tank and proponent of the TPPA spoke about its October 2015 report “The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Seizing the Opportunities, Losing the Myths.”

IDEAS Malaysia attempted to debunk the legitimate concerns of the Malaysian AIDS Council, the World Health Organisation, Nobel prizewinner Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), the American Medical Students Association, among many other bodies working in public health and access to affordable medication, that TRIPS+ provisions in the TPP would reduce access to medicines and drive drug costs up. IDEAS, on the other hand, claims that there would be no increase in medicine prices under the TPP.

In the report, the author states that increases in regulatory data protection (RDP) for pharmaceuticals “do not result in meaningful increases in health care expenditures or expenditures on medicines relative to overall health care spending”, referring to a bar chart from Canada and Japan indicating these costs remaining stable after these countries increased the length of data protection.

While IDEAS is correct in stating that Canada does have RDP and that drug spending as a per cent of total health care spending has leveled off in recent years, the two are not related.
]The levelling off of drug spending as a per cent of total health care spending is due to two factors: first, in recent years the provinces which control the price of generic drugs have gotten much more aggressive in demanding lower generic prices; and second, and a much more significant factor, has been the expiry of patents on major blockbuster drugs.

Click here for the full rebuttal on the Malaysian Online.