But the pharmaceutical industry argues that any changes should be made cautiously and with clear guidelines for everyone involved. The sector wants safeguards to support companies\u2019 participation and to prevent market monopolies, which it argues could develop if a drugmaker wins a contract for a large volume of medicines across the bloc.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is no potential competition in the way we are implementing these joint procurements for the future, and you are excluding players in the future, that will not be sustainable and that will create future concerns,\u201d Elvira said.<\/p>\n
Generic drugs sector also sounds alarm<\/p>\n
Most critical medicines are generics, and the generics industry also has warnings for the negotiators. Adrian van den Hoven, director general of the sector lobby group Medicines for Europe, pointed to a few problems with the tool, including poor planning, countries’ lack of commitment to buy jointly procured medicines and different\u00a0packaging requirements across countries.<\/p>\n
Legislators should also ensure that there is no conflict with national procurements, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have experience of member states doing both the European procurement, or the joint procurement, and the national procurement at the same time to see which one \u2014 we assume \u2014 delivers the better price,\u201d he said. \u201cBut then that leaves the suppliers on the hook with a commitment to supply for both. And this is really something to avoid.\u201d<\/p>\n
The solution? The Commission and countries should consider incentives such as multi-award contracts, a minimum binding commitment from countries to buy, and criteria that go beyond price, to ensure adequate forecasting for companies and to secure a more sustainable supply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But the pharmaceutical industry argues that any changes should be made cautiously and with clear guidelines for everyone…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":376185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[180930,261,113,56349,2556,29443,210,3195,2426,135,1060,122,27811,2852,180931,24711,3014,125,67,132,68,2857],"class_list":{"0":"post-376184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-adrian-van-den-hoven","9":"tag-companies","10":"tag-conflict","11":"tag-cyprus","12":"tag-development","13":"tag-drug-shortages","14":"tag-health","15":"tag-industry","16":"tag-innovation","17":"tag-markets","18":"tag-medication","19":"tag-medicines","20":"tag-meps","21":"tag-negotiations","22":"tag-nicolas-gonzalez-casares","23":"tag-procurement","24":"tag-rare-diseases","25":"tag-rights","26":"tag-united-states","27":"tag-unitedstates","28":"tag-us","29":"tag-vaccines"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115543069459405625","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}