Drug Prices in Mexico

I wonder if the drug companies in Mexico aren't in bed with the government who is supposed to have the welfare of it's citizens in mind when it passes legislation. Let me tell you why I think things are strange here.

In Mexico, the government regulates the maximum price a pharmacy may charge for any drug. This price is stamped into the end panel of the drug packaging. When traveling in Mexico, one sees signs at most pharmacies that advertise their discount prices—anywhere from 10-80%. This mostly ends up being around 40% discount on name brand drugs and 60% on generic drugs.

For example, today I bought a pain medication called “Dolac” (I didn't ask for it by it's generic name—really stupid of me). The maximum price was 199 pesos for 10-10mg. tablets. After the discount, I paid 123 pesos-or 38% discount. In US dollars that was about $10, or $1 per 10 mg. tablet.

Now if I had bought 20 mg. tablets, the maximum price for a box of 10 would have been 398 pesos—or twice the price of 10 mg. tablets. You see, in Mexico, the price is determined by the mg. not by the total number of tablets. In the States, if you by a 10 mg tablet for, let's say, $1 but want a 20 mg. tablet, you will probably pay around $1.20 or less per tablet. That's because the cost of the drug that includes manufacturing and R&D costs, packaging, shipping and profit for the retailer doesn't go up very much between a 10 mg tablet and a 20 mg. tablet. Total costs would only increase by a very small percentge for the bigger mg. tablet. So somebody is making a killing in the drug business (read that drug manufacturers and legislators) in Mexico.

One more example: I bought a bottle of pain killers called “Tramadol".   A bottle of 50-50 mg. capsules was 70 pesos but I paid the discounted price of 42 pesos or $3.40US.  I bought a blister pack box of 10-50 mg. tablets priced at 298 pesos but only paid 119 pesos or $9.60US. So somebody is making a killing in the drug business (read that drug manufacturers and legislators) in Mexico.

The other thing that greatly increases the cost of drugs in Mexico is packaging. Almost every drug is only available in blister packs and in small quantities. I believe the major reason is that typically a poor Mexican will only buy enough of say, an antibiotic, to treat himself until he feels better (I won't even go into how this practice promotes the breeding of super-bugs). So he will buy one or two doses of a drug at a time. Blister packs facilitate the ability of the pharmacy to accommodate the purchase of less than a full box of a drug. Packaging is certainly making a difference in price but I find it hard to believe that the difference between $.06US a capsule and $1US a tablet as in my “Tramadol “ example above, is all because of packaging costs. And I have found this practice to be true in all eight of the Latin American countries I have visited.

I have been lucky to find the drug I take every day for high blood pressure packaged in a bottle of 100 tablets. So far I've found that this packaging for this drug is only available from one manufacturer. I pay around $3US for 100 tablets; when I was buying this drug in a blister pack, I was paying about $7 per 30 tablet box.

If the legislature has the power to control the maximum retail price of drugs, why have they set the maximum so high? Even the discounted price charged by the pharmacies is much higher, in many cases, than the prices in the U.S. The price of drugs in Canada is much less than in the States. And yet Mexico, with it's minimum wage set at about $6US a day and a great many of citizens living in true poverty, has essentially higher drug prices than the U.S. I think something stinks!

But then, I'm obviously naïve about the ways of government.