Choice

Patients want choices. They want to share in decisions about the medicines they take. A wider range of treatment options can also help bring down prices. For example, after the first hepatitis C medicine was introduced in the United States, it took less than a year for other companies to launch rival products that competed on price and clinical benefits. As a result, hepatitis C treatments are less expensive in the United States than any other Western country. Evidence from Europe tells a similar story about the benefits of competition.

But choices are limited when national governments don’t approve rival products for marketing or don’t prioritize the latest treatments in their health care spending. Research shows that more new drugs are available to patients in countries that devote a greater share of their pharmaceutical spending to innovation. In Germany, for example, patients have access to more than 70 percent of new drugs available worldwide. But Latin Americans have access to far fewer new medicines – from nearly a third in Mexico to as little as 10 percent in Colombia.

Speed

Patients want fast access to the latest medicines. If new treatments and cures are not available in a timely manner, patients can’t benefit from them quickly. Sometimes that can mean the difference between life and death. Patent office delays and long waits for medicine marketing approval can prevent fast access to the latest breakthroughs.

Today, patients across Latin America are waiting too long for access to many treatments already available in other countries. Lengthy patent office delays in Argentina and elsewhere can undermine incentives for private sector innovation, hinder patient access to valuable new treatments and impose huge societal costs. Long regulatory approval times can also slow access to treatments. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in Latin America, but one analysis found it took regulators in Brazil far longer than elsewhere to approve new treatments for that devastating disease.

Freedom

Every pharmacy should be a duty-free shop. Patients want the freedom to purchase medicines free of taxes and tariffs. High tariffs and taxes are an unnecessary barrier to medicine imports and limit access to new treatments. Under the World Trade Organization Pharmaceutical Agreement, 34 countries around the world committed to not impose any import duties on a wide range of medicines and other health products.

Unfortunately, no country in Latin America is a party to that agreement. Tariffs on imported medicines average nearly 10 percent in Argentina and can reach as high as 14 percent. Globally, on average, taxes account for 6.3 percent of the retail price of drugs. But federal and state taxes on medicines in Brazil can add nearly 34 percent to the retail price of treatments – among the highest tax burdens on medicines in the world.

Innovation

Patients want to cure the incurable. Thanks to medical breakthroughs and wider health care access, people across Latin America are living longer than ever before. But we urgently need new treatments and cures for non-communicable conditions like heart disease, diabetes and cancer that are now the leading cause of death in our region. Left unchecked, unmet medical needs could have dire consequences for our region – from premature death to lower productivity and crippling health care costs.

Governments in some countries are limiting incentives to invest in new treatments and cures for patients suffering from cancer and many other diseases. The governments of Chile and Colombia have been urged by outside groups to break temporary patent protection for certain new medicines – a drastic action known as “compulsory licensing.” In Argentina, national regulations limit incentives to invest in improvements and new uses of existing medicines.

Investment

Patients want access to quality health care. If there is no convenient, safe place to go for disease diagnosis and treatment, patients cannot get better. The crucial link between innovative treatments and the patients who need them are the hospitals, doctors, pharmacies and broader systems that serve as the delivery vehicle. Yet in many cases, health care system capabilities are far below the levels required to ensure patients receive the attention and follow-up they need.

A key issue is understaffing. Only about one-third of countries in the Americas meet the recommended availability of 25 doctors and nurses per 10,000 people. The main reason for this deficit is lack of spending on domestic health care systems. By failing to invest in treatment delivery and access to care, governments set the stage for even greater problems in the future as general quality of health declines and spurs high hospitalization and treatment costs.