Argentina government wants to intervene in pricing of national pharmaceutical market

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Argentina’s Minister of Internal Trade, Roberto Feletti, met with Luana Volnovich, director of the National Institute of Social Benefits for Pensioners and Retirees (PAMI), to analyze price increases in the pharmaceutical market.

Feletti said he wanted to achieve his goal at a meeting with National Health Minister Carla Vizzoti to evaluate “the tools the state has to ensure access to medicines for the entire population,” according to El Cronista.

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Hours before the meeting with PAMI – the largest purchaser of medicines in the country – he had said on the radio that “there must be some intervention” in drug prices.

He continued, “There can’t be any vital consumption, like food or medicine, that is not regulated to some extent by the state. It cannot be left to the market to allocate resources. No one is saying that drug providers, manufacturers, or laboratories don’t need to make money, but that’s the way it is.”

Pharmaceutical product inflation is measured in different ways, but most have in common that the cumulative increase in the first nine months of 2021 and last year is, on average, higher than the increase in inflation.

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