A dispute between Athens and a Swiss pharmaceutical company makes it all the way up to the EU Health Council, as Roche withdraws cancer medicine from Greece.
The Swiss drugmaker ROCHE decided to pull cancer drug Cotellic from the Greek market. The company effectively removed the drug from the prescribed medicines list, meaning that its cost can no longer be covered by the state. The move was made as a reaction to the 25% rebate Greece recently imposed on branded drugs. The compulsory discount has been applied retroactively to January 2017 in the country as part of its bailout deal to appease the country’s lenders.
The market withdrawal was immediately denounced by Greek health minister Andreas Xanthou. “Access to innovative medicines should not be a business decision”, he said. Xanthou called the move “unacceptable”, insisting that Athens would not fall for “blackmail”. “The provocative tactics used by Roche must be addressed with determination by all the political and social forces of the country and by all the European institutions,” he declared in a statement.
The Greek government brought the case before the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council stating the case goes beyond narrow national interests. “There is a need to develop strong and systematic synergies in the policy area of pharmaceuticals, particularly on bargaining power in order to prevent unfair trading practices that are especially inappropriate in this very sensitive area,” the Greek Council delegation said.
In an emailed statement, the company answered: “With the imposition of the mandatory 25% discount on new innovative products, which is added to a series of mandatory discounts, making Cotellic available in Greece at the reimbursed price has become unsustainable.”
The written statement further reads: “We want to ensure that Greek patients continue to have access to innovative medicines and treatments now and in the future. At the same time, we need to protect our company from the extremely unfavorable environment created by the rebate and discount based pricing policy for pharmaceutical companies in Greece.” Roche was among the 50 drugmakers that pulled drugs from Greece in 2013 as the country was facing insolvency.
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