Pfizer Catches Flak for Giving Drug Discounts to Some But Not All Filipinos
Pfizer has been criticized for offering some Filipinos discounts of up to 60 percent on its drugs because the discounts are not available to all. In the Philippines, Pfizer promotes a “Sulit Patient Care Program” in which holders of the Sulit card get discounts on various Pfizer drugs. About 1.9 million patients have taken advantage of it, Pfizer claims.
The problem, according to the Business Mirror’s hyperbolic columnist, Lito Gagni, is that:
… the cards are usually handed out in expensive hospitals that are visited by medical representatives.
… So, because Mang Juan, with his hands gnarled from overwork, and countless other poor Filipinos can never hope to be treated in an expensive hospital, they can never hope to ever possess a Sulit 50-percent discount card for Pfizer products.
The Sulit card was a response to criticism that Pfizer opposed the import of cheap Pfizer drugs from India. (Sounds familiar!) Pfizer countered that it was extending the Sulit benefit:
… we are about to extend its benefits to millions more patients in partnership with the Government Service Insurance System and other major health-care providers who share the view that the program is good for the Philippines.
[Pfizer's] card gimmick has “1.9 million Filipino beneficiaries.” But according to Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral, a respected cardiologist, there are more than 17 million hypertensive Filipinos who should have access to more affordable treatment. Unfortunately, they are not Sulit-enrolled.
Doubtless Pfizer will file this one under “no good deed goes unpunished.”
- Previously:
- Pfizer to Close S.F. Biotech Center in Favor of Unit Accused in Patent Suit
- Pfizer Patent Suit Could Make Elan Bapineuzamab Talks Go a Whole Lot Easier
- Pfizer’s Foreign Viagra Ads: Mailman Jokes; Space Sperm and the Fountain of Youth
- Pfizer’s Off-Label Bextra Team Was Called “The Highlanders”
- Pfizer Exec: Company Approved of Off-Label Bextra Promotion
- Pfizer Offered $53 a Share for Wyeth; Wyeth Failed to Say Yes
- Pfizer Violated Own Rules to Hide Depression Drug Studies
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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