is the purchase price of certain treatments too low?

All countries in the world are victims of drug shortages, but perhaps France is more so. Because with the explosion in global demand for drugs and pharmaceutical companies struggling to keep up with and supply everyone, some of these manufacturers clearly prefer to abandon France to sell their drugs first and foremost to countries with higher bids.

REPLAY >> Drug shortages: will we have to pay more? The Franceinfo Talk debate

Jérôme Wirotius is alerting our health authorities today. For the general manager of the Biogaran laboratory specializing in generics, which manufactures and sells mostly in France, it is no longer profitable to sell drugs to France. “Pediatric amoxicillin is 0.76 eurosays Jérôme Wirotius. So you have the medicine, a glass bottle, a stopper, a pipette, packaging and a leaflet for 0.76 euros.

“With inflation and economic regulation, we find ourselves in negative margin on this product, and it is not the only one unfortunately. We are losing money.”

Jérôme Wirotius, Managing Director of the Biogaran laboratory

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According to him, France negotiates the prices of drugs too low, in particular generics, that is to say the oldest molecules used for everyday diseases: paracetamol, antidiabetics, corticosteroids or even antibiotics. “Typically prednisolone, which is a widely used corticosteroid, is four times more expensive in Italy than in France and six times more expensive in Germany than in France”explains the general manager of the Biogaran laboratory.

Medicines at low prices, others very expensive

In France, Social Security, that is to say the contributions of the French, bears most of the cost of the drug, around 30 billion euros per year. This year 2023, like every year, the government hopes to make savings on this item: 900 million in savings. At the heart of this machine, there is the Economic Committee for Health Products (CEPS), made up of representatives of the government and Social Security. He negotiates directly with pharmaceutical companies. It sets the price of new drugs on the market and regularly reassesses the price of old drugs downwards. “If you take the market for any product like automotive or television, if you have products coming in to compete with incumbents, they’re going to put downward pressureexplains Philippe Bouyoux, President of the CEPS. We kind of do the same thing. A product that arrives and increases competition but does not bring much will have a lower price and eventually the whole class may go down.”

“A product that arrives, new and innovative, that is to say that it brings something, we will set a higher price for it than the products that were already in place. So it can be very expensive, even very very expensive.”

Philippe Bouyoux, President of the CEPS

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We are talking about innovative drugs that save lives, that cure hitherto incurable patients. But drugs that are probably too expensive. “We break records a bit every yeardeplores Gaëlle Krikorian, sociologist and specialist in the economy of health products. Today, on treatments against orphan diseases that affect a limited number of people, we can have treatments that cost one, two or three million per dose. On cancer drugs, we are at tens of thousands of euros or hundreds of thousands of euros per person. So that’s the kind of scale we’re on.”

“It raises the question of why are we accepting such levels of profit on products that are life-saving products? I think that’s a debate we should have.”

Gaëlle Krikorian, sociologist

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The principle in France is to lower the price of old drugs with manufacturers to allow the other end of the chain to finance innovative treatments offered at very high prices. Knowing that in negotiations with laboratories around the world, the CEPS has the reputation of being fierce. And for good reason: he can not afford to “sink the Social Security” French, he must keep his budget.

A price increase for certain drugs in the coming months

For manufacturers, this system is no longer tenable for everyday drugs. They lose money. The great French principles are therefore reaching their limits. The government has therefore just agreed to make an exception, explains CEPS President Philippe Bouyoux: “Faced with this type of situation, we can respond with a price increase. We can grant, the government has just asked us to do so, targeted increases on certain products which are strategic products, that is to say products that are critical and products where we might have supply vulnerabilities.”

This increase in the price of certain generic drugs will take place in the coming months. The government also assumes to make a commercial gesture on the price of drugs from laboratories that will manufacture in France. The idea is that by helping these laboratories to maintain their production here, we also make it possible, in the event of a global shortage, to secure our country’s supplies of strategic drugs.