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Price becomes a main instrument for rationing pharmaceutical drugs in Central America as a consequence of pro‐market reforms implemented in the 1980s. Under market‐rationing conditions, people's access to branded drugs does depend on their purchasing power and on the vector of prices they face. The purpose of this paper is to study the regional pricing strategy followed by pharmaceutical firms across Central American countries. These countries differ in such economic factors as per capita income, income distribution, market size, and nature and extent of their social‐security system; thus, there are conditions that foster the implementation of price‐discrimination practices across the region.

The investigation takes advantage of a large database with information about prices of identical drugs sold across Central American countries and produced by 17 large pharmaceutical companies. Regression analyses are used to study whether price discrimination exists in Central American drug markets and what pricing strategies are followed by different pharmaceutical companies.

Results show that there are significant differences in the prices of identical drugs across the Central American countries, as well as that pharmaceutical companies follow different pricing strategies.

Cross‐country price comparisons are usually based on constructed price indices, which imply losing detailed information about the products being compared. This investigation uses prices of identical drugs, rather than constructed price indices, to study cross‐country price differences by pharmaceutical companies across the Central American region. The study of price discrimination is crucial to understanding how markets end up rationing such an essential product as pharmaceutical drugs.

Purpose – Pharmaceutical expenditures have an important role in Europe. The attempts to control expenditure have used a wide range of policy measures. We reviewed the main measures adopted by the European Union countries, especially in countries where governments are the largest third-party payers.

Methodology – To complement a literature review on the topic, data was gathered from national reviews of health systems and direct inquiries to several government bodies.

Findings – Almost all countries regulate prices of pharmaceutical products. Popular policy measures include international referencing to set prices (using as benchmark countries that have set lower prices), internal reference pricing systems to promote price competition in domestic markets, and positive lists for reimbursement to promote consumption of generics (including in some cases substitution by pharmacists of drugs prescribed by physicians). Despite the wide range of policy measures, it is not possible to identify a “silver bullet” to control pharmaceutical expenditures. We also identified two main policy challenges: policy coordination among countries within the European Union to maintain incentives for R&D at the global level, and the development of new relationships with the pharmaceutical industry; namely, the so-called risk-sharing agreements between the pharmaceutical industry and governments/regulators (or large third-party payers).

Pharmaceutical companies have received a tremendous amount of attention in the media regarding increases in drug prices at rates much in excess of the rate of inflation. Synthesizes the numerous issues affecting drug pricing and the role that the auditor should play in determining a “fair” price. Evaluates the role of the auditor with regard to the call from investors for additional information in the annual report and more in‐depth analysis of management′s ethical and operational practices. The pharmaceuticals industry represents a unique area for consideration, given ethical and regulatory pressures and the nature of the drug development and distribution process. With the complexities of this process, considers the auditor′s responsibility to understand unfair pricing practices along with the ability to detect such practices.

This paper aims to review the progression of the pharmaceutical industry through the lens of government legislation in the USA. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of pharmaceutical marketing practices while providing direction for emerging pricing and promotional approaches.

This paper offers a comprehensive review of pharmaceutical marketing practices through an exhaustive review of the literature. Further, suggestions are made based on emerging marketing techniques found in the literature.

Changes in government legislation will continue to play a significant role in promotional activities of the pharmaceutical industry. This study identifies specific pricing and promotional tools the pharmaceutical industry can use in response to these emerging changes. Specific actions such as enhancing public image, reconfiguring sales forces, outsourcing and optimizing the pricing mix are suggested.

This paper presents clear guidelines for managers by affording applicable practical tools to offset changes posed by government legislation.

This paper seeks to fill a gap in research surrounding pricing and promotion in the pharmaceutical industry. Further, this paper offers concrete pricing and promotional approaches for pharmaceutical management.

This paper aims to analyse the impacts of the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) as adopted by the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the pharmaceutical regulation and pricing of drugs in Bangladesh. The purpose of this paper is to explore how Bangladesh could adjust obligations for patent and pharmaceutical law reforms in the context of TRIPS Agreement while maintaining societal goals to ensure access to medicines. Another prime objective of this study is to examine viability of arguments regarding pharmaceutical patents for affordability and accessibility of pharmaceuticals in Bangladesh.

This paper used doctrinal research and case study using surveys and interviews in Bangladesh to understand the perceptions of different stakeholders regarding TRIPS and possible impacts on the local pharmaceutical industry and also consequences as to access to pharmaceuticals in terms of pricing, availability and affordability.

This study suggests that in the case of Bangladesh, the main health bottleneck is not patents or any drugs, but the lack of proper healthcare service, health infrastructure and lack of efficient healthcare personnel. Again, most of the necessary drugs for the local market are off patent, but patented drugs, issues of price, availability and affordability could become a concern for Bangladesh in situation of multi-drug resistance and for diseases like HIV AIDS, cancer and cardio-vascular problems.

This study was based on randomly selected interview and surveys. To get a broader picture of the impacts of TRIPS compliant patent law and pharmaceutical patents in a country like Bangladesh, more in-depth socio-legal studies need to be conducted. Due to shortage of time and resources, it was not possible to conduct broader socio-legal studies; therefore, this study may not reflect views of all related stakeholders.

This paper will guide how countries like Bangladesh could adopt intellectual property policies for pharmaceuticals in a way not only adjusting societal goals for accessibility and affordability of pharmaceuticals but also promoting innovation and capability of local industries.

Countries like Bangladesh should adopt intellectual property policies balancing not only investment and innovation side but also societal goals to ensure access to medicines for the vast majority of poor populations.

This study is an original study based on primary sources as collected during field studies in Bangladesh. It also used doctrinal research, and related materials are duly referred.

The current paper explores the effect of private market characteristics on the access of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to public markets in some sectors. Using survey data of small and medium enterprises in the pharmaceutical sector in Egypt, we confirmed this effect. We found that regulations of drugs pricing and registration in the private market constrained the capacity of those firms to compete in the public markets. However, some other factors play it the other way. The policy implications of these findings indicate that governments need to account for private markets characteristics when designing support packages for smaller enterprises in public procurement markets.

This research studies the effect of deregulation of price cap in pharmaceutical market. Price regulation (either through price cap or reference price) is common practice in the pharmaceutical market but recently there are increasing voices calling for deregulation claiming that deregulation could help in lowering drug price and increase revenue of pharmaceutical firms. Upon those callings, Chinese government removed the price cap regulation in June 2015. The author uses this natural policy experiment to study this effect.

In this study, the author applied the interrupted time series analysis (ITSA) on the revenue data of nine categories of both generic and branded drugs in China from March 2011 to August 2016 (the time frame includes both before and after of the initialization of the deregulation) and analyzed the effect of deregulation.

The results showed that, whether the revenue of drugs will increase or decrease after the deregulation of price cap depends on the level of competition and the change of patterns of the branded and generic drugs are different. When HHI (Herfindahl–Hirschman index) is sufficiently low (competition is high), revenue does not change as a result of deregulation, when HHI is moderately low (moderate competition), revenue from generic drugs will decrease significantly and revenue from branded drugs will increase significantly, and when HHI is high (low competition), revenue from generic drugs will increase significantly and revenue from branded drugs will decrease significantly.

This is a unique study with a unique data set. Most previous studies focus on regulation of drug price and analyze how this may affect drug revenue; however, this is a natural policy experiment of de-regulation. Moreover, previously most studies focus on reference pricing regulation and this is price-cap, a different mechanism that is rarely studied. The originality/value is high of this article.

The World Health Organization estimated that in 1999 roughly one-third of the world's population lacked access to essential medicines that would have saved or improved their lives. Our analysis focuses on how pharmaceutical product patents restrict access to essential medicines in developing countries. It is well established that pharmaceutical product patents provide little incentive for pharmaceutical companies to develop new medicines designed to treat diseases prevalent in developing countries or to market in developing countries those patented medicines developed to treat diseases prevalent in developed countries. Economists have developed theoretical models showing that these incentives could be changed if (1) developing countries provided intellectual property protection for new pharmaceutical innovations and (2) an international regulatory framework were established to facilitate pharmaceutical companies setting lower prices in developing countries and higher prices in developed countries for patented medicines. We develop an index of property rights in pharmaceutical innovations covering 129 countries from 1960 to 2005. It shows that in 1960 only a handful of countries provided significant protection for pharmaceutical innovations, but by 2005 over 95 percent of countries in our sample provided significant statutory protections. However, an international framework to allow pharmaceutical companies to price discriminate has not been put in place. We conclude that international price discrimination mechanisms, compulsory patent licenses, and regional patent buyouts are not viable mechanisms for providing access to essential medicines to patients in developing countries. Global patent buyouts are more likely to achieve this goal, as they are not founded on an impractical separation of pharmaceutical markets in developing and developed countries and they provide critical incentives to develop new essential medicines.

Purpose – There is a particular need for health policy evaluations in terms of achievement of goals, which may help inform policy-making not only locally but for the wider international policy community. In this chapter, we review the impact of pharmaceutical regulation and policies in Israel on a range of health system performance goals that, in the pharmaceutical context, are mainly related to ensuring the availability, accessibility and affordability of medicines.

Approach – We assess pharmaceutical policies and their impact, within the Israeli National Health Insurance (NHI) system enacted in 1995, on the degree to which the following main policy goals are being achieved: containment of drug expenditures; sustainability and equity of financing for pharmaceuticals; efficiency of expenditure in the pharmaceutical sector; and availability and accessibility of pharmaceuticals.

Findings – The findings point to a number of accomplishments as well as outstanding challenges. The main accomplishment is successful cost containment of (public) expenditure on medicines. Government price regulation operates as a mechanism responsible for sickness funds’ (SFs) savings, over which the state has no information or monitoring. Although the package of publicly financed drugs is comprehensive, delays in reimbursement decisions and high level of cost sharing mean that medicines have become increasingly unaffordable for many patients, especially for low-income persons with chronic diseases.

Implications – Regulation of the pharmaceutical sector should focus on two aspects: decreasing the information gap between the SFs and the regulator and reforming the cost-sharing policy to increase affordability and equity.