Volume 193 - Issue 3
Expiry of patent protection on statins: effects on pharmaceutical expenditure in Australia
Authors: Philip M Clarke and Edmund M FitzGerald
Med J Aust 2010; 193 (3): 186-187. || doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.2010.tb03850.x
Published online: 2 August 2010
Published online: 2 August 2010
In reply: Our recent study1 estimates pharmaceutical expenditure from 2009 to 2019 for various levels of use of off-patent statins, ranging from 25% (close to the current proportion) to 100%. We also show that England has much higher use of generic statins and consequently much lower pharmaceutical expenditure. However, our study does not advocate a particular level of generic use and so it is unclear why Bulfone has chosen to focus on only one of the cases (100% use of generics) presented in our study.
We agree with Bulfone’s view that it is important to consider whether the greater use of generic statins has an impact on health outcomes in addition to examining the implications for pharmaceutical expenditure. This is one of the points we have already made: “The key question is whether the health benefits resulting from using statins under patent or combination therapies justify the substantially higher subsidies from the [Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme].”1
The appropriate framework to use to consider this question would be to examine incremental cost-effectiveness of those statins still under patent (atorvastatin and rosuvastatin) compared with off-patent alternatives (simvastatin and pravastatin). Such an evaluation would be timely, as Australia faces billions of dollars of extra pharmaceutical expenditure over the next decade if we continue to prescribe patented statin formulations at current levels.
References
- Clarke PM, Fitzgerald EM. Expiry of patent protection on statins: effects on pharmaceutical expenditure in Australia. Med J Aust 2010; 192: 633-636. <eMJA full text>
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