Policy-makers and purchasers increasingly face very high price tags for new medicines, and some worry that these prices challenge the financial sustainability of solidarity-based, publicly funded health care systems.
EU Member States use a mix of policy instruments to regulate the prices and determine the reimbursement of medicines. Different policies are applied for different sectors, market segments and medicines. Some pricing, procurement and reimbursement policies are more frequently used for new, potentially high-priced medicines.
Popular policies and tools include external price referencing, managed entry agreements, health technology assessment (HTA) and tendering, but each one of these comes with limitations.
Adaptations of these policies, such as value-based pricing, strategic procurement and differential pricing traits, are also being explored and could be a first step in this direction.
Further, more far-reaching measures and initiatives may also be needed to fundamentally tackle the issue of high medicine prices and to overcome information asymmetry and a lack of transparency about the real prices paid and the real development costs of medicines.
Collaborative efforts, at both intra-country and cross-country levels, in terms of joint price negotiations and procurement and enhanced collaboration for horizon scanning and HTA appear to be promising but require strong commitment from national policy-makers.
Pricing, reimbursement and procurement policies are important elements in the ‘tool-box’ to improve affordable access to new high-priced medicines but further interventions in other pharmaceutical policy areas may be required to supplement them.
© World Health Organization 2018 (acting as the host organization for, and secretariat of, the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies).