TURKEY: COMPROMISE DEAL REACHED ON PHARMA, BUT

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 ANKARA 001740 DEPT FOR EUR/SE, EEB/TPP/BTA DEPT PLEASE PASS USTR FOR MMOWREY USDOC FOR ITA/MAC/CRUSNAK AND KNAJDI SENSITIVE SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: EINV ECON ETRD EFIN TU SUBJECT: TURKEY: COMPROMISE DEAL REACHED ON PHARMA, BUT INDUSTRY, PHARMACISTS STILL ANGRY REF: A) ANKARA 1352, B) ANKARA 1503, C) ANKARA 1516, D) ANKARA 1693 This cable is sensitive but unclassified. Please protect accordingly. ¶1. (SBU) Summary. The long negotiations between the GOT and the pharmaceutical industry on how to close the health care budget gap ended in a "compromise" deal on December 2. Under the terms of the deal, the GOT moved only marginally from its initial negotiating stance, and reserved the right to modify the terms of the deal if economic conditions change. The GOT also moved ahead with implementation immediately despite having agreed to a five business day delay. Industry analyst appraisals of the deal have ranged from "ruinous" to "disastrous," but all agreed that even the minor improvements were better than no deal at all. U.S. firms continue to reevaluate their local presence, and are also conducting drug- by-drug analysis of profitability - the likely result is that many drugs will be removed from the market. With their demands still unsatisfied, pharmacists throughout Turkey conducted a general strike on December 4 to protest the effects of the pricing cuts on their bottom line. Additional actions may come out of the annual pharmacists' union meeting, coincidentally scheduled for December 11. Analysts predict that nearly a third of Turkey's 23,000 pharmacies may close their doors. End Summary. Negotiations Successful, but a Pyrrhic Victory -------------- - ¶2. (U) After months of negotiation (see reftels),on the evening of December 2 the GOT and pharmaceutical industry finally came to a "compromise" deal on closing the growing health care budget gap. Looking at the original plan set out by the GOT in its September 18 decree, the industry managed to extract very little in the way of concessions. Under the compromise deal, the following pricing structure will be put in place: -- The mandatory discount for original drugs with no generic version (or for which no approved generic version is actually on the market) will be set at 12% vice 13% in the original proposal, bringing the total mandatory discount to 23%; -- Both original drugs with a generic version on the market and generic drugs will be priced at 66% of the lowest reference price among five European countries, vice 60% in the original proposal; -- The new 12% mandatory discount for original drugs will not be applied during the first year a drug is on the market; -- The GOT will hold quarterly reviews of health care expenditures and if expenses are higher than anticipated will increase the mandatory discounts appropriately. (Note: In theory, if spending is less than anticipated, the discount will be reduced but this is unlikely to happen. End note.); and, -- Products older than 20 years that are currently sold above the reference price will be sold at 100% of the reference price as of January 1, 2010 (a quirk of the law excluded these products from the reference price system). This new plan is expected to save the GOT approximately TL 3.1 billion (USD 2.06 billion) per year. Industry analysts estimated that 70-75% of this burden will fall on foreign firms, and that U.S. firms' share will be roughly USD 650-700 million per year. ¶3. (SBU) All industry contacts agree that the plan is a disaster both in its actual terms and in the precedent it sets for other countries, but felt that it was the best deal that could be achieved. Several contacts also noted that the GOT had committed to three years of pricing predictability, which they felt was a positive development. (Comment: As the GOT built in a mechanism to increase discounts whenever savings are less than anticipated, this commitment seems a bit weak. End comment). Murat Asik, Healthcare Policy and Market Access Manager at Merck, Sharp & Dohme, noted that as part of the deal, the Social Security Administration agreed to allow five business days before implementation so that firms could get approval from their home offices. In violation of this agreement, the new prices were implemented immediately on December 4, which Asik observed did not inspire much confidence in the GOT's reliability. In addition to planned layoffs described in reftels, all pharmaceutical firms we have ANKARA 00001740 002 OF 002 talked to indicated that they are doing a drug-by-drug profitability analysis in light of the new discounts, and that many drugs may be pulled from the market as a result. Pharmacists Strike Back -------------- ¶4. (U) Angered by apparent GOT indifference to the effect of the decree on their bottom line, pharmacists throughout Turkey engaged in a general strike on December 4, shutting down all of Turkey's 23,000 pharmacies except for a handful of duty pharmacies, where lines were long and service was slow. Many pharmacists also participated in a march in downtown Istanbul to highlight the issue. ¶5. (U) The pharmacists' problems are twofold. First, they purchased many of their drug stocks at the prevailing price several months ago, but are now required to sell them at a greatly reduced price. The pharmaceutical companies have agreed to compensate them for this disparity, but only for drugs purchased within the last 45 days. So many pharmacies will take a significant loss on older stocks. Other pharmacies simply refused to take on any new stock while the issue was being decided, with the result that they are now operating with only minimal supplies of drugs. ¶6. (U) The longer-term problem facing pharmacists is that their profit margin is set by law at a certain percentage of the drug price. While the percentage will not change, the actual profit will fall proportionally with any discount. So with a hypothetical profit margin of 20%, a drug that previously sold for 10 lira and generated 2 lira in profit would now be sold for 6.6 lira and generate only 1.3 lira in profit. In practice, the formula for determining prices is complicated and opaque (partly because the GOT uses its own fictional exchange rate in determining reference prices),with the result that many discounts will actually exceed 34% of the genuine price, further affecting retail profits. ¶7. (SBU) Based on data from the Turkish Pharmacists' Union, the fall in pharmaceutical prices will lead to a contraction of 30% in profits and will cause the annual revenues of over 12,000 pharmacies to drop below TL 40,000 ($27,000) and of those, 7,000 are expected to close their doors. Murat Salihoglu, Secretary General of the Pharmaceutical Industry Employers' Union (IEIS),noted that the closures may not be an entirely bad thing, as there are probably already too many pharmacies in Turkey and 500 new ones are added to the market each year. This trend has been sustained in part because profit margins were relatively generous in recent years, making it attractive to open new but unnecessary stores. Some correction may be beneficial, he argued, but the dislocation caused by mass closures would severely impact the availability of drugs at a time when the GOT is trying to expand access to health care services. ¶8. (U) While the pharmacists succeeded in attracting headlines for their strike, the GOT seems less impressed. Labor Minister Dincer told the press that the pharmacists would not lose a penny from the price changes and, while he acknowledged that their profit margins will decrease, said that they had benefited from years of artificially high prices and now would have to live with more realistic margins. There has been no indication that the GOT plans to back down from its current stance. In response, the pharmacists have threatened to escalate the situation, and will be discussing possible strategies later this week at their December 11 annual conference (which had been scheduled before the pricing decrees). These could include further stoppages or restrictions on which drugs they will agree to sell. ¶9. (SBU) Comment: While the GOT seems happy with the compromise deal, no one else is. And since the GOT has already violated the terms of the agreement with regard to the implementation date, there is little reason for the pharmaceutical industry to trust assurances that there will not be further arbitrary adjustments to come. Investment in pharmaceutical production in Turkey and accessibility to the latest innovative drugs is likely to suffer as a result, with companies leery of putting any more money at risk in an unpredictable environment. End comment.