The price is right?

Abstract

Summer is coming to an end as I pen my first editorial as President, and to say that it has been an eventful few months would be something of an understatement. The hottest topic has, once again, been the pricing of medicinal products – what else? The EpiPen® saga in the United States, much like the Daraprim one earlier in the year, as well as the almost concurrent tabling of the Health Service Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill in the United Kingdom, once again caused the debate to flare up like a spark in dry summer grass, and, combined with the various reactions and counterreactions from political and industrial spheres, has made for some interesting reading. As if that were not enough, and just when it seemed one couldn’t possibly squeeze a further drop of controversy on the issue, the United Nations Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines issued its long-awaited report, once again igniting the discussion, calling for a radical shift in the model whereby costs of research, manufacture and market innovative medicines translate into the prices of medicinal products.