Job loss threat due to French drug price cuts

Christian Lajoux, president of the French pharmaceutical industry organization the LEEM, has forecast job cuts at drug companies as the government moves to impose new price cuts. The first phase of the operation will be a letter containing "guidance" on prices to the Economic Committee for Healthcare Products (CEPS), the body responsible for fixing prices. It is expected the cuts will be imposed on the basis of entire therapeutic categories - on groups of drugs which work in the same or similar ways to treat conditions. Once the patent expires on a drug in a particular category, and so paves the way for a generic competitor, the CEPS can decide on reducing the price of other drugs in the same class, even if these are still protected by patents. One category frequently cited in France at the moment is that of statins, which includes a number of highly-prescribed products.

There is speculation that the CEPS could - for example - cut the price of Pfizer's Tahor (atorvastatin), which is still patent-protected. The price could be reduced to about the level of Sanofi-Aventis' Vasten (pravastatin) or the Merck & Co drug Zocor (simvastatin), both of which had recent patent expiries.

Brigitte Calles, director of the drug research organization LIR, representing the interests of 15 foreign drugmakers with bases in France, said the imposition of the policy could damage therapeutic progress. She also argues that, within one therapeutic category, two drugs can have quite different effects with each product having its specific use.