Last update:
09-Oct-2018

In 1954 the Nobel Laureate economist Paul Samuelson formulated the theory of classifying as "public", "a good, if its consumption by one person does not lead to a restriction of consumption by any other person". Today, the area of health care and of pharmaceutical treatment in particular, should be included in the "private goods provided by the state". At the core of the distribution of medications there is inherent competition for their use and exclusion, showing that the supply of a commodity in the public domain does not automatically make it a "public good". The difficulty of access to pharmaceutical treatment was shown to be even more acute when someone attempted to investigate the situation of the innovative, high-cost pharmaceuticals. Over the decade that is required, on average, for a pharmaceutical substance to reach the market as an innovative medicinal product, the cost reaches from the zero level to $ 800. In Greece, according to the IMS, the average time for approving an innovative medicinal product is 21.3 months, when in the United States of America (USA) the relevant time is 1.9 months and in Germany 3.5 months. Although health remains a constitutional right of the "bourgeois democracy", which should ensure the access of every person to pharmaceutical treatment and innovative pharmaceuticals, respecting fully the principles of the Human Rights Council, the prospect for common European drug strategies and policies in recent years has not been so auspicious. The dream of medicinal products as a social good has been "lost in translation" and innovative pharmaceuticals now appear to be becoming a private good, still offered by the state, but with a slippery slope towards the category of limited accessibility private goods. Maybe the medicinal drugs will become in the near future expensive "brand names".

Key words: Common good, Drug, Innovative drug, Public good, Social policy.