Soft regulation

Roszdravnadzor has almost completed registration of prices for essential medicines

Contrary to the pessimistic warnings of many analysts, the Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare and Social Development (Roszdravnadzor) will cope on time with one of the most pressing tasks - registration by April 1 of manufacturers' maximum selling prices for medicines from the list of vital and essential drugs (VED) ). Despite the fact that officials independently calculated the maximum price values ​​for drugs, which caused a lot of dissatisfaction on the part of manufacturers, almost all drugs on the market have already been registered. Thus, yesterday on the official website of Roszdravnadzor it was reported that registration had been granted to 5,526 items. There are already dozens of unregistered forms, and in the two days remaining before the end of registration, all manufacturers must receive the necessary document.

This will complete the first stage of the transition to regulation of basic prices on the pharmaceutical market. Let us recall that it was necessary to register selling prices (factory prices for domestic manufacturers and customs prices for foreign ones) in order to limit the appetites of all participants in the pharmaceutical chain - from the manufacturer to the pharmacy. Starting next month, the registered selling price will become the reference point for the consumer cost of medicines, to which the wholesale and retail chain will be able to add only a strictly defined percentage of the trade markup. The methodology for calculating premiums will also be uniform for the entire country for the first time in the history of modern domestic pharmaceutical business. Thus, prices for the most common drugs will be fixed for at least a year - it is with this frequency that they are planned to be reviewed in the future.

It is worth noting that the decision to compulsorily register prices at the level of the second half of 2009 was immediately disliked by many domestic and foreign manufacturers. In January and February, many experts almost talked about a boycott, which manufacturers secretly announced to compulsorily register prices. Indeed, for a long time, Roszdravnadzor had nothing to boast about: by the beginning of March, applications for registration had been received for less than half of the drugs on the Vital and Essential Drugs list. The number of requests from manufacturers began to increase sharply only after it became clear that Roszdravnadzor’s cost assessment was not so inadequate, and that the remains of already produced and imported drugs needed to be sold one way or another, says Nikolai Demidov, General Director of the Pharmexpert Center for Medical Research. “Now we can say that the registration process was quite smooth for most companies, there was definitely no horror,” said the Vremya Novostei expert.

According to Mr. Demidov, even those manufacturers of drugs on the Vital and Essential Drugs list who are dissatisfied with the prices offered to them understand that it is better to sell the product at least at some price than to be left with unsold stocks. “Taking into account that we are talking here primarily about the products of some Russian factories that produce medicines, so to speak, according to a simplified scheme, at non-modern production facilities, inventories can be very large - up to an annual volume for a number of drugs,” - the expert believes. Therefore, Nikolai Demidov is sure, there is no doubt that the state will fulfill the task of limiting prices for a certain group of drugs.

But this will only speed up the removal of really cheap drugs from the pharmacies’ assortment. “It will still be profitable for distributors to sell more expensive drugs, which means that they will simply refuse very cheap ones. In any case, if the state doesn’t figure out how to deal with this,” says a Pharmexpert representative. For example, in the new list of vital and essential drugs, the non-proprietary international name enalapril (a substance often used to treat patients with cardiovascular failure) is represented by more than ten trademarks, with a registered price from 10 to 100 rubles. It is not difficult to guess which of this variety wholesalers will be more willing to sell.

But for now, regulators are focused on completing the registration process with minimal image damage. "Roszdravnadzor" must deal with the situation in St. Petersburg, where, as I was informed, leaflets appeared in pharmacies saying that many medicines have not been registered, after April 1 there will be a shortage and it is necessary to purchase for future use" - such an order to recently, the head of the Ministry of Health and Social Development, Tatyana Golikova, gave the acting head of the federal service Elena Telnova. Ms. Telnova very promptly conducted an investigation and has already reported to the minister that in this way citizens are being “intimidated and misinformed” by a certain Pharmmedservice CJSC, which owns a chain of pharmacies called “Udachnaya”. “Measures are already being taken there,” Ms. Telnova assured. According to her, there is no reason to fear that medicines will disappear from pharmacy shelves after April 1.

Galina PAPERNAYA