Berlin – Today, the Federal Council comments on the ALBVVG. The Federal Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry eV (BPI) supports the criticism of the federal states on the draft law: “The plans presented by the federal government describe the right goal, but are the wrong recipe for the massive delivery and supply difficulties with medicines,” says the BPI general manager dr Kai Joachimsen. “Unfortunately, individual measures for only about one percent of the patent-free preparations approved in Germany are not sufficient as an antidote to permanently solving the supply problems for the patients. It’s like trying to prevent an impending multi-organ failure with painkillers.” The Minister of Health‘s approach was correct and the problem was finally recognized. According to the BPI, this tentative approach is no longer sufficient after years of worsening the supply situation.
“On the other hand, we need various effective measures that reduce the long-standing excessive cost pressure in the entire basic supply and enable large investments in the location and in security of supply. Six cents is the average amount that a manufacturer in the generic area earns per day therapy, while a moratorium without real compensation for inflation freezes prices at the level of 2009 and costs for energy, raw materials and intermediate products explode. We already said that pharmaceutical companies cannot produce economically under such conditions in Germany before the word “delivery bottlenecks” even appeared in the media,” says Joachimsen. “Now politicians must act quickly and comprehensively.”
In agreement with the federal states, the BPI calls in particular for the location promotion in the discount agreements not to be limited to antibiotics only: “There are also supply bottlenecks due to fewer providers with many other generic drug therapies such as oncological drugs,” says Joachimsen. He refers to the BPI’s well-known “4-3-1 proposal” to adjust the discount agreements: “There should be at least four suppliers in the market, three of whom receive contracts and at least one of which produces in Europe. Supply-critical medicines should be completely excluded from this.” The BPI managing director, on the other hand, does not consider additional storage or reporting obligations to be sensible: “No one has yet been able to explain to me how an expansion of the existing regulations would improve the difficult supply bottleneck situation and thus justify the additional effort could. From my point of view, the only thing that helps now is a quick combination of price pressure reducers, location promoters and bureaucracy blockers.”
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