Translated material
Socialism in tablets
The state is ousting private companies from the market for preferential medicines
In the Russian corridors of power, more and more new projects are brewing to create state holdings and corporations in more and more new industries and market sectors. After oil production, aircraft, helicopter, machine tool, ship, automobile, engine construction, housing and communal services and special metallurgy, it seems that it is the turn of the pharmaceutical market. Moreover, two projects are being discussed in this industry at once - state distribution and state production.Recently it became known about a draft of a new document, which provides for the transfer under state control of the entire large wholesale market of medicines intended for beneficiaries. It is planned that a single Pharmaceutical Logistics Complex (this is the working name of the future corporation) will push all the current leaders of pharmaceutical distribution away from government procurement, sending them, at best, to the “second echelon.” The new complex should fully support the federal drug program for providing preferential categories of citizens, if possible shifting the emphasis from the purchase of expensive imported medicines towards domestic ones and those produced by foreign companies on Russian territory.
Of course, for now, modern pharmaceutical factories in our country can be counted on one hand, and a very limited list of drugs can be purchased from them. But here too the state is ready to intervene. For more than a year now, officials have been talking about the need to create a state pharmaceutical production holding, whose factories will have to concentrate on meeting the needs of the disabled, pensioners and other ordinary beneficiaries. It is worth noting that according to the results of the first half of 2007, more than 60% of the drugs in the additional drug supply program (DLO) in price terms are imported drugs.
Many experts consider the creation of a new production association on the domestic pharmaceutical market to be very realistic, although they doubt the feasibility of such an association. “I know about this project. But the creation of such a holding seems completely unfounded to me. In the absence of competition, such production will not have an incentive to maintain the quality of products, which can lead to a decrease in the quality of mass medicine as a whole,” Igor Sergeenko, executive secretary of the commission of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs on healthcare and the medical industry, told Vremya Novostey. In his opinion, the new production holding can actually start operating no earlier than 2010, when all factories that do not meet the international GMP standard will be closed .
By the way, the struggle for the right to take the lead in unifying the industry under the state wing is already underway. True, it is still very quiet and unnoticeable. According to Vremya Novostei, there are at least two contenders - FSUE Moskhimfarmpreparat and FSUE Microgen.
The fact that wholesale supplies of medicines for beneficiaries is almost the only large business in a country where there is no state presence has also been talked about for a long time. But until recently there were no specifics. The existence of a document that spells out exactly how the state should integrate into the existing system of supplying preferential medicines is officially denied by both the Ministry of Health and Social Development and the Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare and Social Development (Roszdravnadzor). But they unofficially admit that this paper was “held in their hands.”
“I saw this document,” says Alexander Kuzin, CEO of the analytical company GSM Group. -- It says that the monochannel supply of drugs to the market with the help of a specially created company in 2008 will save the budget 4 billion rubles. I very much doubt this, since an additional link in resale, according to all the laws of economics, is only additional expenses, but not savings.” Also in the mysterious document it is said that the state must either build or rent category “A” warehouses for in-flight (that is, large packages) storage of medicines. According to officials, warehouses that were previously filled with completely different goods can also be used for this.
Only a truly new distribution company, of course, will not rent anything, according to the current leaders of the wholesale supply market. The Biotek company, one of the leaders in DLO supplies, told Vremya Novostei that warehouse space of this level now costs $500 per square meter. To supply the entire country with medicines, the newly formed company would have to spend a lot of money on storage. But most likely this will not be necessary. As all the major players are sure, the new holding will become a kind of management company, to which they will have to report and with which they will have to share. The current large suppliers will become regional contractors of the state; technically nothing will change for them.
With this approach, the creation of a new wholesale company can be a matter of several days, the Ministry of Health and Social Development explained to Vremya Novostey. “The solution to this issue lies solely in the plane of political will,” both officials and manufacturers and suppliers are confident. And traditionally accommodating foreign companies have already rushed to support the next Russian reform. “We welcome this initiative, it will be more convenient to work this way. The creation of a single distributor for supplies within the framework of the DLO program will lead to the solution of a number of issues of interaction between the manufacturer and distributors that have accumulated to date,” commented on the innovation the head of the corporate communications department of Bayer Schering, Yulia Svetova.