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Caught in a squeeze between the health needs of aging populations on one hand and the financial crisis on the other, governments

admin2014-06-30  75
问题     Caught in a squeeze between the health needs of aging populations on one hand and the financial crisis on the other, governments everywhere are looking for ways to slow the growth in health-care spending. Increasingly, they are looking to the generic-drugs(普通药物)industry as a savior. In November Japan’s finance ministry issued a report complaining that the country’s use of generics was less than a third of that in America or Britain. In the same month Canada’s competition watchdog criticized the country’s pharmacies for failing to pass on the savings made possible by the use of generic drugs. That greed, it reckoned, costs taxpayers nearly C$1 billion a year.
    Then on November 28th the European Commission issued the preliminary results of its year-long probe into drug giants in the European Union. The report reached a damning, though provisional, conclusion: the drugs firms use a variety of unfair strategies to protect their expensive drugs by delaying the entry of cheaper generic opponents. Though this initial report does not carry the force of law(a final report is due early next year), it has caused much controversy. Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner, says she is ready to take legal action if the evidence allows.
    One strategy the investigators criticize is the use of the " patent cluster(专利群)". A firm keen to defend its drug due to go off-patent may file dozens or hundreds of new patents, often of dubious merit, to confuse and terrify potential copycats and maintain its monopoly. An unnamed drugs firm once took out 1, 300 patents across the EU on a single drug. The report also suggests that out-of-court settlements between makers of patented drugs and generics firms may be a strategy used by the former to delay market entry by the latter.
    According to EU officials, such misdeeds have delayed the arrival of generic competition and the accompanying savings. On average, the report estimates, generics arrived seven months after a patented drug lost its protection, though where the drug was a big seller the lag was four months. The report says taxpayers paid about ￠ 3 billion more than they would have had the generics gone on sale immediately.
    But hang on a minute. Though many of the charges of bad behavior leveled at the patented-drugs industry by EU investigators may well be true, the report seems to let the generics industry off the hook（钩子） too lightly. After all, if the drugs giants stand accused, in effect, of bribing opponents to delay the launch of cheap generics, shouldn’t the companies that accepted those "bribes" also share the blame?
What can we learn from the report issued by the European Commission?
选项 A、Drug firm will use just ways to protect their drugs.
B、Cheaper generic drugs are easy to enter market.
C、The report has come to an ultimate conclusion.
D、The final report may lead to commissioner’s legal action.
答案D
解析 事实细节题。定位句提到，11月28日欧洲委员会发布的一个初步调查报告，下文开始对该报告进行描述，由第二段最后一句Neelie Kroes，the EU’s competition commissioner，says she is ready to takelegal action if the evidence allows，可推断如果证据充足，委员们会采取行动，D)符合题意。第二段第二句提到the drugs firms use a variety of unfair strategies to protect their expensive drugs by delaying the entry ofcheaper generic opponents，可见药物公司使用了不公平的竞争手段，推迟普通药物的上市，故排除A)、B)；该句前半句提到The report reached a damning，though provisional，conclusion…，可见该报告的结论只是暂时的，并不是最终结论(ultimate conclusion)，故排除C)。
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