August 27, 2019
The New York Times had a piece about a new law in China that reduced penalties for importing drugs that have not been approved by China’s regulatory agency. While it is not clear from the piece how far-reaching this change in the law will be in practice, the potential impact for both China and the world is enormous.
India has continued to be a massive supplier of generic drugs, both to its own people, but also to the rest of the world. Many drugs that are subject to patent protection in the United States are available at free market prices in India. The gap in prices is often more than 100 to 1. (India’s generics vary in quality, but their largest manufacturers are comparable in quality to U.S. manufacturers.)
The United States has been pushing for years to force India to narrow the scope of its generic industry, making its patent system closer to the U.S. system. While there is support for such a change in India, there is also massive opposition to a move that would hugely raise domestic drug prices and cripple one of its leading industries.
If China were to become a large-scale buyer of India’s generic drugs it would provide a large boost to the country’s industry and make it less likely it would give in to U.S. demands. This matters not only for the Chinese and Indian markets, but it raises the prospect where most of the world might be paying a few hundred dollars for drugs for which Pfizer and Merck are charging people in the United States and Europe hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That might not prove tenable in the long-run.
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