Dutch hospitals and insurance companies join forces to combat excessive medicine pricing by big pharma.
The Academic Medical Centre of Amsterdam has replicated a drug (CDCA) for an extremely rare disease (hereditary metabolism disorder CTX), of which the price was recently increased by the manufacturer to 160 thousand euros per patient per year.
By using cheap raw materials imported from CHina, the AMC managed to reproduce the drug for only 1/8th of the price, bringing it down to 20 thousand euros per patient per year.
Insurance companies have now decided that they will only pay for the cheap version of the drug.
The drug in question has already been used to treat CTX for forty years, but because it was originally registered as a drug for bladder stones , and not CTX, and has not been used to treat those for a long time because there are better drugs for it, pharma company Leadiant saw the opportunity to register CDCA as an 'orphan drug' with the EU drug authority EMA. With this new status for an ancient drug, Leadiant acquired monopoly for ten years, meaning other producers are not allowed to sell the drug for that particular disease. With the new status in their pocket, Leadiant raised the price from 40 thousand to 160 thousand euros.
The case hit the media and public outrage ensued. Now, with the blessing of our parliament and government, hospitals and academical medical centres were given carte blanche to disregard the monopoly and produce the drug themselves.