[e-drug] Re: Prices of pharmaceuticals (cont)

["Damian Silbermins" <silbermins@fibertel.com.ar>]

E-drug: Re: Prices of pharmaceuticals (cont)
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Argentina has two main markets: the hospital circuit and the
pharmacies. Regarding hospitals, each sector makes its own deals with
Big Pharma and therefore is very difficult to control, although
supposedly since they buy in quantity, they should get substancial
discounts. The pharmacies sell to the public according to the price set
by the industry, which can be partially accessed through
www.medicinaglobal.com (go to MEDICAMENTOS and then PRECIOS and search
for the desired product). However, the consumer hardly ever pays those
prices since they are often partially covered by either the public
social security system or private HMOs.

Please bear in mind that Argentina is currently the 70th country in
Transparency International's list, and drug prices certainly reflect
that fact.

Furthermore, due to the unstable economic system and the continuous
devaluation of the peso regarding the USS dollar, comparisons are
difficult to make if currency from developed countries is used. If
possible, I would be very interested to know what are your plans in
order to compare different prices. Are you going to use a standard
currency as the dollar, or are you going to use some type of index for
each country, so that the prices do reflect the purchase ability of its
consumers. Regarding the last item, I believe that the once popular
McDonald's Big Mac index was rejected as reliable by The Economist a
couple of years ago.

Finally, prices usually have to do with volume, so perhaps it would be
interesting to compare prices/volume of drugs in different countries
rather than just going for prices. However, such information is very
expensive and, to my knowledge, is only available through IMS Health
(www.imshealth.com)

Best wishes,

Damian Silbermins, MD
Capital Federal
Argentina
Mail: silbermins@fibertel.com.ar
      d_silbermins@hotmail.com



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