Will data exclusivity for biologic medicines in the TPP increase public spending on medicines?
By Philip Stevens, July 2015
In the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations, the U.S. and Japan have proposed that TPP partners increase their period of regulatory data protection (RDP) for biologic medicines to align with practice in other countries.
These proposals have been strongly opposed on the grounds it would significantly increase public spending on medicines, thereby potentially limiting access.
This research note analyses OECD data on public health spending in two countries that have recently increased the term of data exclusivity for medicines: Japan and Canada.
It finds that following the introduction of longer terms of data exclusivity in these two countries, neither healthcare spending nor relative expenditure on medicines rose significantly.
