The Canadian Federal Government has recently announced new regulations pertaining to the evaluation of pricing for newly patented drugs. These regulations aim to protect Canada from excessive drug pricing at a time when, according to Health Canada, Canada has some of the highest patented drug prices in the world. These regulations prevent the Patent Medicine Prices Review Board (the “Board”) from conducting a comparison with the drug’s pricing in the United States and in Switzerland to set Canadian pricing. This restriction has been put into place because the United States and Switzerland currently have some of the highest drug prices worldwide. Instead, when determining pricing, the Board can conduct comparisons to drug pricing in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Norway, Australia, Belgium and the Netherlands. These regulations come into effect in July 2020 and Health Canada forecasts they could save Canada billions of dollars over a ten-year period.

Read more about the changes here.