PMPRB’s basket of comparator countries showed that Canadian prices were still in the middle of the pack in 2021, with median overseas costs being 12% higher than Canadian prices.
According to the most recent PMPRB report, “prices for existing medicines are fairly stable,” suggesting that novel medicines offered in Canada are not too expensive, contrary to what some industry voices say, and are not significantly rising in price in relation to the Consumer Price Index.
Because PMPRB adopts a “flawed and outdated definition” of R&D spending from 1987, the board also often understates industry R&D expenditures, IMC said.
Citing the most recent Statistics Canada report that utilizes modern criteria, IMC said Canada’s research-based pharmaceutical industry poured more than $2.2 billion in research and development (R&D) in 2019, up 13% from the previous year, contributed $15 billion to the economy, and supported more than 100,000 high-value jobs annually.
The R&D to sales ratio for the industry may be calculated using this data, and is projected to be 8.8%, which is much higher than the PMPRB’s assessment.
