Pulse
Drug price index sees first increase in 5 years
| CMAJ 2000;163(6):753 | See: eLetters |
| | Other Pulse articles / Autres chroniques Médicogramme | |
After 5 years of decreasing prices, the Patented Medicine Price Index (PMPI) showed an increase of 0.2% in 1999. The last increase was recorded in 1993, when prices rose by 0.1%. In 1999, Canada's Consumer Price Index registered an increase of 1.7%. The PMPI , which includes only drugs used by humans, measures the average change from the previous year in the average transaction prices of patented drug products sold in Canada. The data are collected by the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board, an independent federal tribunal that has a mandate to ensure that prices of patented medicines are not excessive (see Figure)
A Statistics Canada index that tracks all pharmaceuticals (both patented and nonpatented) showed a 0.8% price increase for 1999. This Canadian result can be compared with that from a similarly constructed index in the United States that, for the same period, recorded an increase of 3.7%.
Drugs as a percentage of all health expenditures continue to rise steadily, reaching a level of 15.2% in 1999. Factors that affect total spending on drugs include changes in total population, changes in utilization of drugs per patient and new types of treatment.
In 1999, patented drugs accounted for 61% of all drugs sold in Canada. Another 30% of sales involved nonpatented brand-name drugs, with the remaining 9% of sales accounted for by generic drugs. At the end of 1999, manufacturers' total sales of drugs for humans stood at $8.9 billion in Canada, a 16.8% increase from 1998. — Lynda Buske, buskel@cma.ca
© 2000 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
