Dive Brief:
- Japan's health ministry is attempting to bolster the country's pharmaceutical industry. One proposed tactic? Raising government-set drug prices to spur more innovation in R&D.
- The government's goal is to increase the use of generic drugs so that 80% of all drugs taken are generic by 2020, compared with only 46.9% in 2013.
- In addition, the proposal highlights the need to further consolidate the generics industry to make it stronger.
Dive Insight:
The upshot of the report from the Japanese government is that the country's biopharma industry is not sufficiently innovative, and that there is an overreliance on use of off-patent drugs.
Rather than continuing that trend, the government would like to see more R&D, more new product approvals, and a stronger generics industry that could take off-patent drugs and create generic copycat versions.