Vladimir is reportedly steamed at the prices charged by some big drugmakers. The Russian leader worries that companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Roche, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis are making too much money off the country’s $1.3 billion subsidized medicines program.

“The appetites of pharmaceutical companies should be reduced,” Putin told health minister Mikhail Zurabov at a government meeting yesterday. “They benefit from more expensive drugs.” His remarks were posted on the Kremlin’s web site, according to The Budapest Business Journal .

Earlier this month, the Russian parliament approved a bill that nearly doubles spending on medicines this year, although some funds must cover debt to drugmakers that ran up in 2006, the health minister explained. The shortfall was caused by changes to a program that gave people the option of accepting cash instead of medicines. Some people who opted for free drugs chose the most expensive meds and the program ran out of money as a result.

What are Vlad’s options, exactly? He may like to rough up an executive or nationalize a plant, but big pharma doesn’t have much in the way of operations in Russia. Then again, there was that incident in the London sushi bar….

[tags]Prices, Russia, Vladimir Putin[/tags]