(Kelly Crowe/ CBC News) — It took three years of fighting for access to confidential drug information, but a Quebec bioethicist has punched a tiny hole in the iron wall of secrecy surrounding patented drug prices.
Two weeks ago, Jean-Christophe Bé lisle Pipon won a long battle to force the Quebec Health Ministry to tell him how much it paid for a new meningitis vaccine (Bexsero/GlaxoSmithKline).
The answer — $90 for the first 8,500 doses and $78 for the next 110,000 — was more than twice as much as the U.K apparently paid, and much higher than the price that Quebec officials deemed to be cost effective.
He asked the original question to find out if a particular vaccination program was worth the price. But he might have also set a precedent that could allow other researchers to start asking tough questions about drug prices.
Right now, contracts between governments and drugmakers don’t allow people to find out how much their governments are paying for patented drugs. (…)