In order to know who’s playing games with prices you only have to compare the Government’s public statements with its own official price lists.

In your editorial Trying to fool people (TMID, 22 January) you refer to Dr Charles Mangion’s claims about the high price of medicines as if it was just another wild shot in this free-for-all game of prices. You also refer to the government’s reaction in listing the names of medicines which had their prices lowered as a result of the government’s intervention. If you care to compare the prices on that list with the prices of the same medicines showing up on the highly publicised pricewatch.org.mt website you will come across some interesting facts.

I shall only be quoting some examples.

In the cases of Plavix (75mg x 28 tabs), Lamisil (250mg x 14 tabs), Efexor (37.5mg x 56 tabs), Efexor (75mg x 56 tabs) and Efexor XL (75mg x 28 tabs), the ‘abusive’ prices are the same ones shown on Pricewatch. This means that the government had effectively consented to the charging of abusive prices at least until March 2008.

The case with Daonil (5mg x 20 tabs) is even more interesting. The price being charged had been almost twice that shown on Pricewatch. Nevertheless, the new agreed price is still higher than that shown on Pricewatch. And let us not forget, this Pricewatch website is the government’s highly lauded price fixing mechanism leading up to what many people consider as the general elections milestone. It’s anybody’s guess, therefore, what kind of safeguards would we all expect once the electoral pressure is over.

I hope this would ease your judgement about who’s fooling who in the area of prices.

Anthony Busuttil

Gudja