Ernst & Young Says U.S. Drug Price Controls Likely

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Federal price controls on prescription medicines could be imposed within the next few years unless U.S. drug makers take steps to moderate their prices, accounting firm Ernst & Young said on Wednesday.

Ernst & Young said the average medicine in 2002 cost about 77 percent more in the United States than in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and Switzerland. The U.S. is the only developed nation in the world with no price controls on drugs.

The price disparity has worsened considerably since 2000, when drug prices in the United States were 60 percent higher than Canada and Europe, the accounting firm said in its annual report on the drug industry.

"Unless the pharmaceutical industry takes steps within its own ranks to effect an alternative solution, U.S. price controls, reimportation, or both seen inevitable," Blake Devitt, a senior Ernst & Young partner, said in the report.

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