FRANKFURT, April 21 (Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s CEO told daily Handelsblatt on Tuesday that Germany risks missing out on new drugs that \u200cthe Anglo-Swedish drugmaker plans to launch if the nation sticks with \u200cplans to keep spending on pharmaceuticals in check.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we can’t launch some of those \u200bproducts, it’s really a problem,” he was quoted as saying by the newspaper. “It’s going to be very hard for us, we’re going to be attacked, but in the end we will have no choice, also because of \u200cthe pressure in the \u2060U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n
Germany’s coalition government last week announced a raft of measures to overhaul the statutory health insurance system to \u2060reduce a looming funding gap by 20 billion euros.<\/p>\n
Under the proposals, an existing mandatory discount on patented drugs could become steeper under a variable mechanism \u200bthat depends \u200bon overall drug expenditures and on \u200bcontributions paid.<\/p>\n
“The proposed regulation is \u200ca dangerous backward step,” said Soriot.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump has been pushing to lower the cost of prescription drugs in the United States, which has traditionally paid significantly more than other wealthy countries. He has sought to tie the cost for Americans to what is paid elsewhere, \u200cincluding in Europe, known as most-favoured-nation pricing.<\/p>\n
Drugmakers \u200bhave delayed launches of some new medicines \u200bin Europe in response \u200bto the U.S. pressure, a Reuters report showed last \u200cmonth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s really not a threat. If \u200byou look at the \u200bmathematics, you realize that the business impact is so big, we have no choice,” Soriot was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
He warned that \u200bEurope overall was at \u200crisk of becoming a place for sales offices for the \u200bindustry and no longer for research, development and manufacturing.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200bLudwig Burger, Editing by Louise Heavens)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRANKFURT, April 21 (Reuters) – AstraZeneca’s CEO told daily Handelsblatt on Tuesday that Germany risks missing out on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6285,5,6288,6309],"class_list":{"0":"post-6318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-astrazeneca","9":"tag-germany","10":"tag-handelsblatt","11":"tag-prescription-drugs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}