Bankgok has established two committees to examine whether to issue compulsory licenses for meds to treat patients suffering from breast and blood cancer, says Public Health Minister Mongkol Na Songkhla, although he declined to name any of the drugs under consideration.

“We have to look at which diseases are killing our people because they can’t access the drugs,” he tells Bloomberg News. “Cancer creates the third-highest death toll for Thai people, after AIDS and clogged arteries.”

Meanwhile, Songkhla says he plans to order more copies of Merck’s Stocrin from Matrix Laboratories, a unit of Mylan Laboratories, and plans to order generic versions of Sanofi’s Plavix blood thinner and Abbott’s Kaletra AIDS med from India, because the big drugmakers failed to offer the big discounts Thailand wants.

“Negotiations didn’t come out as good as we expected,” Mongkol says. “If their prices aren’t more than 5 percent above the generic drugs, we won’t hesitate to buy from them. Now, their prices are 20 percent higher.”

Thailand says copying the drugs will allow the government to provide free medicine to a larger share of the country’s poorest citizens, including its 220,000 HIV sufferers. PhRMA says taking that step would remove the incentive for companies to invest in research, and that its members would retaliate by not introducing new drugs in Thailand. Two days ago, 35 members of Congress wrote the US Trade Rep this week, accusing her of retaliating against Thaliand by placing the country on its Priority Watch list.

“I’m not afraid of having no drugs to treat people,” Mongkol says. “If there aren’t any patented drugs registered in Thailand, it’s more convenient for us to import generic drugs from other countries.”