{"id":81299,"date":"2017-05-23T08:31:39","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T08:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=054b2a5f66d50c9dec1252f8b82228bc"},"modified":"2017-05-23T08:31:39","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T08:31:39","slug":"news-story-cma-issues-provisional-decision-in-relation-to-drug-firms-pricing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=81299","title":{"rendered":"News story: CMA issues provisional decision in relation to drug firm\u2019s pricing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>This sets out the Competition and Markets Authority\u2019s (<abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>) provisional decision that MSD operated an anti-competitive discount scheme for its medicine Remicade. Remicade is the brand name for MSD\u2019s version of a biological medicine called infliximab, which is used primarily in the treatment of patients with gastroenterology and rheumatology conditions such as Crohn\u2019s disease, ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis.<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> has provisionally found that MSD broke competition law by abusing its dominant position through a discount scheme for Remicade that was likely to restrict competition from \u2018biosimilar\u2019 versions of infliximab that were new to the market.<\/p>\n<p>At this stage of the <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>\u2019s investigation, these findings are provisional and no conclusion should be drawn that there has in fact been any breach of competition law. The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> will carefully consider any representations by the company under investigation before determining whether the law has been infringed.<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> proposes to find MSD and its ultimate parent company Merck &amp; Co., Inc. jointly and severally liable for the alleged infringement. The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> opened this investigation in December 2015.<\/p>\n<p>For more information see the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/cma-cases\/pharmaceutical-sector-alleged-discounts-offered-on-a-product\">case page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CMA has today issued a statement of objections to the pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp &amp; Dohme Limited (MSD).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81299"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}