Court rules PMPRB does not have unlimited jurisdiction

From CFAdvocacyNow FB post:

While today's ruling by the Quebec court is not everything that we had hoped for, it is a warning shot across the bow for the Patented Medicines Pricing Review Board that they do not have unlimited jurisdiction. The judge wrote that the new factors to be considered in determining excessive pricing “must not be analyzed with the objective of fixing an ideal price or the lowest possible price, as the analysis would then clearly be unconstitutional, having no link with the patent power”.

Better still, she goes even further to say that pharmacoeconomic analyses must not be used to set a “uniform maximum threshold…, to be applied mechanically and without nuance, [as that would go] beyond the control of excessive pricing to become price control”. That is a strong statement that the federal government cannot set pharmacoeconomic thresholds.

Furthermore, her decision to strike down the amendments having to do with disclosing rebated prices to the PMPRB is because these requirements take it into the realm of price fixing, pure and simple. Bottom line, these statements by the judge set the groundwork for future challenges to the PMPRB.

We want to thank Audrey Boctor and Miriam Clouthier of IMK sencrl/LLP for their outstanding counsel of behalf of the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Treatment Society. We will continue to fight on behalf of cystic fibrosis patients to ensure no one is left behind as we press the federal government to deliver life-saving CF medicines to Canadians now and in the future. CF can’t wait.