Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 30 March 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Operation of the Medical Card Scheme: Discussion

Mr. Joe Ryan:

There are two primary initiatives in play at the moment. One is that we have pulled all the hospitals together under a common procurement framework that allows them to work together to put the best possible arrangement in place nationally. They still have the capacity to do things locally where they have their own local requirements. Second, there has been excellent work delivered, even throughout the pandemic, by consultants in a number of hospitals in replacing some of the originator high-tech drugs with biosimilar drugs. They are slightly different from generic drugs but the same principle applies that they tend to be less expensive. That has driven much more competition in the market for those very complex drugs and significant savings have been made in this regard. That is helping us to contribute to the cost of new drugs.

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