Cheaper Medicine Bill: Pfizer made it?

If I were as suspicious as I suspect I am, I would have suspected that printed somewhere on the House version of the so-called Cheaper Medicines Bill, somewhere on its rather transparent packaging, you’ll find the familiar tagline: “Pfizer made it.”

But since I am not, then I would just wish to respond to the sponsors’ charge that the bill’s passage is being delayed by the “antics” of those who do not intend to join the carefully managed mad rush to have the bill passed, no matter what the cost.

It is not merely the fact that the bill is couched in language as obscure as that of literature on a medicine box that invites suspicion. It is the attempt of the bill to water down existing laws apparently to favor multinational patent holders.

Two proposed provisions jump out of medicine carton: first, the diminution of the government’s right to use patents when required by the public interest as provided under the Intellectual Property Code; and second, the curtailment of the right to use patents for experimental purposes.

In the first case, where the present law authorizes any government agency to make a determination that the use of the patent is essential to public health, nutrition and national security, the bill proposes to restrict that power by making a declaration of a state of national emergency a sine qua non for government use.

In the second case, where the present law grants the use of a patent for experimental use unqualifiedly, the bill proposes to insert the condition that experimental use should not affect the rights of the patent holder.

If the goal is cheaper medicine, why give “aid and comfort” to multinational patent holders?

People more suspicious than I am are even coming up with the conspiracy theory that some constitutionally questionable and downright infirm provisions contained in the bill were written into it to ensure that the law, once passed, will fail judicial scrutiny. These provisions include the creation of a roving commission to monitor, and, in their discretion, control prices of medicines (one wonders why, if the sponsors are confident that “parallel importation” will do the trick, price control is necessary). They also include a provision compelling retailers of medicine to buy and carry products subject of parallel importation on their shelves, which the opposition to the bill rightly characterizes as confiscatory. (The state can, under the power of eminent domain, compel a person to sell his property, but there is no constitutional basis for the state to compel a person to buy property)

So while the sponsors ride the popular wave urging its swift passage, there are those who, risking a lynching by the mob, dare stop and ask the question: Whose interests does the Cheaper Medicine Bill serve?

Viagra guarantees respectable erections, and nothing more. Have some multinational pharmaceutical companies, with the Cheaper Medicine Bill, come up with something that guarantees a monumental screwing?