Pfizer Applies for Viagra to Qualify for Swiss Insurance Refund
Bloomberg News
June 30, 1998, 6:04 a.m. ET
Pfizer Applies for Viagra to Qualify for Swiss Insurance Refund
Zurich, June 30 (Bloomberg) -- Pfizer (Schweiz) AG, a unit
of New York-based drugmaker Pfizer Inc., said it asked the Swiss
Social Security office to add its impotence pill Viagra to a
list of drugs covered by health insurance in Switzerland.
Pfizer said men suffering from ''acute'' erection problems
should be able to claim insurance for Viagra, the only pill
available that treats impotence. Reports have suggested the cost
of subsidizing sales of the drug may be as much as 200 million
Swiss francs ($131 million) a year -- an amount Pfizer has said
is exaggerated.
Swiss pharmacies began selling Viagra yesterday.
Switzerland is the first European country and the third nation
in the world to approve the sale of the drug. More than 1.5
million Viagra prescriptions were written in the U.S. within
weeks of its launch in April.
Swiss Interior Minister Ruth Dreifuss told SonntagsBlick
that users of Viagra should pay for the drug themselves.
Dreifuss said the government will apply ''strict criteria'' when
it decides whether to subsidize the drug.
The government decides which treatments should entitle
users to recoup their costs from their health insurer in
Switzerland. It also contributes to the cost of buying health
insurance.
In the U.S., Clinton administration officials are
considering whether to require state Medicaid programs to cover
the cost of prescribing Viagra, as private insurers wrestle with
the problem of paying for the impotence pill.
Medicaid is the health insurance program for the poor,
jointly financed by state and the federal government. The
federal government sets certain benefit and coverage
requirements and the states administer the Medicaid programs.
An estimate shows the cost of requiring all states to cover
Viagra would cost the health insurance program more than $100
million a year, Florida Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles and Utah
Republican Gov. Mike Leavitt wrote in a letter to U.S. Health
and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.
Last week Aetna Inc.'s Aetna/U.S. Healthcare managed-care
unit said it won't pay for Pfizer's Viagra under its regular
prescription-drug coverage, the Wall Street Journal reported,
citing an Aetna spokeswoman. Kaiser Permanente Group, the
largest U.S. health-maintenance organization, said this month it
would stop paying for Viagra because continuing to meet the cost
of prescribing the drug would force Kaiser to raise rates.
Pfizer (Schweiz) shares were unchanged at 167.75 Swiss
francs on the Swiss Exchange. Pfizer stock fell 2 to 109 15/16
in New York yesterday, as the Wall Street Journal reported that
U.S. regulators received about 100 reports of men suffering
serious adverse reactions or dying after taking Viagra.
--Sarah Knight in the Zurich newsroom (41-1) 224 4111/ab
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