I'd like to move to pricing.
Dr. Joel Lexchin testified to the committee. He said:
...the drug companies will not open up their books to reveal their R and D costs for new medications. There's a figure of $2.6 billion that's bandied around about being the cost of getting a new drug to market. That kind of figure is based on confidential data that won't be released. If drug companies want to prove that they need to charge these significant amounts of money that they do for new drugs, then they should prove to Canadians, to insurers, that those prices are actually justified, but so far they haven't.
To what degree are a drug company's production costs revealed to the government and considered in PMPRB reviews on excessive pricing? Do they open up their books and reveal their true cost of production to you?