Controversy between Clinics and Laboratories over the price of medicines

The Chamber that unites national laboratories (CILFA) went to the crossroads with information from ADEMP (Association of Private Medicine Entities) that ensured that the prices of medicines has risen above inflation and the variation in the value of the dollar. Thus, the public sale price of medicines varied by 20.42% in January/April 2022, while the official exchange rate grew by 11.9% during that period, ”the Clinics and Sanatoriums Report said.

On the other hand, according to CILFA “according to the official drug price index, prepared by INDEC, not only in each of the first three months of 2022, but also in November and December 2021, lThe prices of medicines had a lower increase than the overall price index of the economy ”.

“In addition, if such an index is combined with the prices of drugs issued on the part of the beneficiary of PAMI, which already represents more than 40% of total sales, the variation in drug prices is even lower. : registered a 12% increase in the first quarter, compared to +16.1% of inflation ”.

Considering recent years, “the increase in drug prices will be 48.3% in 2021, i.e., 2.6 percentage points below inflation, while in 2020 it will be 24%, that is, 12, 1 percentage point below inflation ”, said CILFA.

Meanwhile, the ADEMP Report, made based on Farmascopio data, states that “to establish year-on-year inflation, 66 mass consumption and prescription products were analyzed. By this method, the year-on-year inflation of medicines in April was 56%. The cost is much higher than established with the same scheme in the year 2021.at 44.6%. ”

Obviously, National Laboratories objected to that report. They argue that “in the pharmaceutical sector there are more than 500 laboratories offering more than 20,000 pharmacist presentations. In such a complex and diverse environment it is not possible to focus on every case. It is for this reason that the analysis of the behavior of drug prices should be made from an index. And reaffirms that what is prepared by INDEC is the one with the greatest extent, methodological quality and adaptation to the regional contexts of the country “.

Next, they attack “an index with a survey of 66 drugs” that “only confirms partiality and marked inconsistency of certain private dimensions.” And they go further: “The transparency of the pharmaceutical value chain in Argentina favors the emergence of many private price measures, each from a specific position, which only contributes to the confusion in the population and a biased interpretation of reality, because they are prepared in a confusing manner or without statistical rigor There is already a technically efficient official measurement that governs the immediate dispersion of INDEC ”.