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LAST
week, the revered and honorable gentleman from Cebu
rose, “with the most reluctant willingness,” to damn the
Cheaper Medicine Bill, principally on the ground that
ignorance of the law excuses no one.
I rise
with more alacrity to defend the bill out of the
obligation incumbent on those with a superior grasp of
the law. I rise to defend it also as the best way of
addressing the problem of expensive, not to say grossly
overpriced, medicines that condemn the vast majority of
our people to lingering illness and death.
For, Mr.
Speaker, it is the foreign pharmaceutical companies who
are mainly responsible for the health crisis in our
country, along with their native lackeys in government,
academe and especially the callous and corrupt medical
profession, who are the terrorists for they have held
this country and its government hostage to their greedy
demand for unrestrained unconscionable profits.
Look at
the definition of terrorism—particularly the elements of
threat or infliction of random harm and damage on a mass
scale—and you will see how the enemies of this bill fit
nicely the description of terrorists.
The
revered and honorable gentleman correctly noted that the
last Congress was damned for failing to pass the same
bill for lack of a quorum. The present Congress will be
so condemned if it fails, as well.
But I
disagree with him that the Filipino people will be
easily appeased if we delay or derail this bill again.
They will not forget. They will remember. They know
their enemies, and no amount of public relations will
change their correct perceptions. The whole nation,
except for paid professionals, wants this bill passed,
and no other.
The
revered gentleman says that this bill has raised the
expectations of the poor to “orgasmic heights”?
I say it
is high time the poor get that experience because thus
far, it is only the foreign pharmaceutical companies and
their paid lackeys who have been climaxing continuously.
The
ball, he says, is in our court. Correct. He asks, shall
we shoot it or freeze it? His answer was the curious one
of why not change the ball of this bill of very
particularized reforms into a comprehensive—meaning to
say, generalized—bill of aspirations designed, I might
add, by the nature of general laws, to self-destruct at
the first challenge.
For the
revered and honorable gentleman proposes leaving intact
and untouched all existing legislation, particularly the
provisions that have prevented cheaper and wider access
to medicines. He proposes that we substitute a general
bill of medical aspirations, a Code of Cheap Cures, so
to speak, but with the catch-all phrase that it shall
supersede all laws inconsistent with it.
That
would be a catastrophe. Let me explain why.
The
present bill, indeed, seeks to remove the particular
obstacles to cheaper and wider access to drugs and
medicines.
It does
not seek to legislate specific prices.
It
traces the problem of grossly expensive medicines to the
legal structure of intellectual property, trademarks,
generic medicines and the inutility of government to use
its power to restrain the unconscionable profits in
drugs and medicines sucked in by multinationals here and
nowhere else in the world.
What
then should be this bill’s solution to the problem of
the infirm legal structure it describes?
Nothing
less and nothing more than to address the particular
infirmities of that legal structure that have been
exploited by the cartel of foreign pharmaceutical
companies, with the conformity of courts and even
government agencies, to keep out cheap medicines and
impose a universal and unchallengeable regime of
expensive drugs on our country. The Philippines and the
United States are the countries with the most expensive
medicines in the world.
If we
substituted a general Code of Cheap Cures, adding only
the collatilla that it shall supersede any law
inconsistent with it, it would instantly beg the legal
question what is the meaning of inconsistency and in
what respect are prior laws inconsistent. Therein lies
the wisdom of a law that tacks a series of amendments to
the particular provisions of the laws it seeks to amend.
And what
is the aim of this list of amendments? It is to remove
existing legal obstacles to a genuinely free and open
market for drugs and medicines; a free market that does
not exist today.
True,
this bill does not legislate cheap prices. But do we
want to do that?
What it
does, rather, as Rep. Junie Cua has so politely
explained again and again, is create opportunities for
cheaper and wider access to drugs and medicines.
The
revered and honorable gentleman says that you can take a
carabao to water but you cannot make it drink.
First,
show me the carabao that will not drink.
Second,
whom is he calling carabaos?
The
poor?
Or
businessmen who will not bite at the first chance to
import or make and sell at cheaper-priced medicines that
will compete successfully against the expensive products
today?
Believe
it or not, the poor are not carabaos and the need for
medicine is not a matter of thirst but mortal necessity.
Second,
no businessman will pass up the chance at huge profits
by selling at cheap prices far larger volumes of the
same medicines and drugs.
Even as
I speak, tycoons are eagerly waiting for the free and
open market that will allow them to substitute large
volumes at cheap for small volumes at astronomical
prices.
The
revered gentleman says that many amendments to many laws
violates the constitutional prohibition against having
more than one subject to every law, or logrolling.
But this
bill has only one subject—cheaper and wider access to
medicines—and amends many laws to make that possible.
One is the subject of the law and the others are means
whereby to achieve it.
A
correct example of logrolling would be if this bill
tried to sneak in another and unrelated product, say,
computer software, though you can make a case for that
as well. As you know, in the dance of legislation, the
courts concede the widest legroom for the legislators.
The
revered and honorable gentleman describes the bill as a
basket of amendments. He says that if you take out all
the amendments to existing laws in the bill, you would
be left with an empty basket or an empty medicine
cabinet, as he put it. All the existing laws would still
be in place.
Well,
why not? Since the bill has traced the obstacles to
cheaper and wider access to medicine to particular
provisions of particular laws, their amendments in the
most precise particular would leave the best parts of
these laws intact. It would excise their egregious
features only with regard to drug pricing. That is the
laudably singular aim of this bill.
The
virtue of amendments over general statements of law is
that, inserted in existing laws, they lay bare the
context and purpose of amendments and thereby aid in
their clarity and effective implementation.
The
honorable gentleman laments that because the bill is
just a basket of amendments that will find their way
into the laws they change, the time will come when no
one will remember this law “and the gallant authors and
champions of the cause of cheaper medicines will pass
into oblivion as it were unwept, unhonored and unsung.”
Unhonored, perhaps, but never dishonored by opposing
this bill. Mr. Speaker, the authors of this bill, in
fact, hope that they will be forgotten because that
would mean that this bill has worked and brought down
drastically the prices of medicines.
Those
who will be remembered, rather, and with infamy, are
those who tried to delay and derail it with the most
specious objections. And should this bill fail because
greed would not be restrained even by legal reforms,
then they will be remembered also as belonging to the
legions of Satan who would deny to the poor redemption
or respite from avoidable sickness and death, even as
they would deny the poor the right to own the land they
till.
However,
the honorable gentleman is only half right about that
basket because, far from being empty, at the bottom will
still lie the price regulatory board. If amendments do
not suffice to restrain the greed for unconscionable
profits, price regulation will do it.
Philconsa v. Jimenez is wrongly invoked because it is
impossible that the Supreme Court will require that the
title of every measure be as detailed as the body of the
bill.
The
revered and honorable gentleman objects to the allusion
to the TRIPS Agreement and the Doha Declaration as
submissions to foreign dictate.
Sometimes, ignorance of the law is excusable if you are
fed with a load of crapulous data.
Far from
foreign dictation, we actively sought the flexibilities
of the TRIPS Agreement and the Doha Declaration. They
are the answer of poor nations to the dictates of rich
nations on the question of cheaper and wider access to
essential, especially lifesaving products.
And that
is why it is called the Doha Declaration, and not the
Doha Dictation. It is the declaration of the poor
countries of the world, with the support of rich but
decent countries, for universal access to essential
goods and services.
He asks,
why not define these terms?
Skillful
law-crafting eschews definitions of terms used only
once. And even as one may amend a law merely by
reference without having to set it out entirely, so one
may refer to international agreements that support the
case for a domestic reform.
And the
reason these reforms are necessary is that the foreign
pharmaceutical companies are saying, through their
native lackeys, that price reforms violate international
obligations. Quite the contrary, references to the TRIPS
Agreement and the Doha Declaration fulfill those
obligations by incorporating them in domestic law. The
international obligation today is to restrain the greed
of the foreign pharmaceutical firms.
There is
nationalism and nationalism. The authors of this bill
subscribe not to the nationalism of those who pay lip
service to xenophobia but to the nationalism of those
who enlist in the struggle against foreign greed with
the help of foreign nations similarly victimized.
It is
the height of intellectual dishonesty to accuse as
foreign lackeys those who, in substance and not just by
porma, are fighting the foreign pharmaceuticals
for cheaper medicines.
To say,
as the revered gentleman does, that the present laws are
sufficient to bring down the prices of medicines, so why
amend them, begs the question why, if existing laws are
sufficient, the prices have not gone down.
The fact
is they are not sufficient. Existing laws have been used
to sue government for trying to bring down medicine
prices. There are none so blind as those who will not
see.
It is
true that the bill does not define parallel importation.
Why should it? It does not mandate parallel importation.
It just makes it legally possible as one means for bring
down drug prices. But, if it will please the honorable
gentleman, then define it.
It is
true that this bill does not specify the grounds for
compulsory licensing. Why should it? Most of the grounds
are in that part of the Intellectual Property Code this
bill will not change. As for the others, they are in the
TRIPS Agreement. I hereby propose an amendment including
them in the body of the IP Code.
And,
finally, on plain-language legislation, frankly, among
us lawyers and legislators, laws are not crafted for the
common understanding but for the understanding of the
government that will enforce them, the lawyers of the
public adversely affected by them—and the courts.
Some
parts of this bill will not be easily understood by the
man in the street. I assure everyone that it is very
well understood by the evil elements whose insatiable
appetite for profits the bill seeks to curb.
Mr.
Speaker, I will stop there, for the main proponents of
this bill, to whom the compliment of gallantry
rightfully belongs, will answer the legitimate concerns
of the revered and honorable gentleman of which there is
at least one, regarding the scope of the administrative
power of a nonetheless essential drug-price regulatory
board. Thank you.
(This speech was read into the record of Congress on
December 3. A loose translation of the title is
“Rebuttal to the Turno en Contra of the dumb or the paid
liars of foreign pharmaceuticals.”) |
