Fair pricing of medicines on the Dutch political agenda

Project name: Health over money: medicines for all
Project period: July 2023 – May 2024

What is the issue?

Access to healthcare and medicines is under pressure, also in the Netherlands. Pharmaceutical companies gain a monopoly on new medicines and sometimes ask extremely high and opaque rates. Expensive medicines are in danger of no longer being reimbursed and the high costs lead to displacement of other care. In low- and middle-income countries, access to many life-saving medicines has long been a distant dream, partly due to the high prices.

What is our solution?

We call on the Dutch government to ensure fair pricing of new medicines. We advocate legislation and regulations for transparency about the costs and pricing of medicines, and agreements on the price when medicines are developed with taxpayer’s money.

How did we advocate for this?

To draw attention to the problem of excessive medicine prices and the solutions, Wemos started the Dutch campaign ‘Health over money: medicines for all’. In our campaign we used videos, interviews and infographics to raise awareness among the general audience and policymakers.

The campaign includes two satirical videos by the Dutch comedian Roel Maalderink. In his first video, he takes to the streets as a representative of a company called Katjing Farma to talk to people about his new medicines and the prices he charges for them. In the second video, his company presents the (fictional) game Monopoly, the Medicine Edition. The video points out that better rules are needed to ensure access to affordable medicines. Both videos have been viewed thousands of times on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Furthermore, the campaign consists of interviews with two keen advocates for fair pricing of medicines: professor Carin Uyl-de Groot and pharmacist Paul Lebbink. We also published an infographic and animation on how we can make new medicines affordable. After the parliamentary elections, we informed (re-)elected MPs about the issue through personal conversations and information packages. People can join a special LinkedIn group to support our call and stay informed of developments.

To conclude the campaign, we presented game boxes of Monopoly, the Medicine Edition, in the House of Representatives to MPs from the Committee for Health, Welfare and Sport. The boxes contained a collection of our campaign materials and policy recommendations.

What was our impact?

Following the presentation of the Monopoly game boxes to MPs, the Committee for Health, Welfare and Sport invited Wemos to a hearing on expensive medicines. Through this hearing, MPs obtained information in preparation for a debate with the Minister of Health on this topic. At our request, Katrina Perehudoff from the University of Amsterdam gave a presentation during this hearing about possible measures to increase transparency in the pharmaceutical sector.

In the debate with the minister, several MPs raised the issue of excessive prices of new medicines and presented Wemos’ policy recommendations. The minister promised to look at the legislation for transparency in Italy and whether and how this could serve as an example for the Netherlands. In addition, a few months later, the parliament adopted a motion calling on the government to investigate the possibilities of attaching conditions to public funding of medicines.

Both the minister’s commitment and the motion encourage the government to work towards fair pricing of medicines. Wemos continues to monitor developments and urge the government to follow up with concrete action.