Publication Type: Other
Countries: Bangladesh
Authors: SOAS-ACE
Publication date: June 2019
Keywords: Pharmaceuticals
Towards a systemic governance reform of the procurement chain of pharmaceutical products and smart incentives for domestic producers of drugs
Research Question
The excess profits of the top companies allow them to market their drugs as ‘better’ drugs, by funding grey or illicit payments to doctors to prescribe these expensive drugs. Our research will map how the economics of this process works, but we will go further and use testing facilities at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine to show that from a pharmacological point of view there is no difference between the more expensive and cheaper versions of the same drugs.
Key Findings
The analysis and the evidence can then be used to provide ammunition to the next tier companies to organize collective action and lobby to add some of the widely prescribed drugs that we will test to the list of drugs that have their prices fixed by government. We will select drugs that are widely prescribed and use the research results to make the case from a public health perspective to add a limited number of drugs to the already existing fixed price list.
Implications
If successful, this will stop the top companies paying doctors to prescribe their brands for these particular molecules because there will no longer be excess profits in these areas. In an incremental way, this strategy could expand the market for the smaller pharmaceutical companies by squeezing out a damaging type of rent seeking and thereby reducing out-ofpocket expenditures for the poor.
