Indication-wide drug pricing: Insights from the pharma market

BACKGROUND: Pharmaceutical spending has been increasing rapidly for years and is higher than ever before. To control the rising costs, countries are implementing regulatory frameworks such as (internal) reference pricing, price cuts or generics substitution. Internal reference pricing establishes a reference price within a country which serves as the maximum level of reimbursement for a group of pharmaceuticals. Price setting in the German market is especially relevant for many European countries, which use Germany as a reference country for their own price setting. METHODS: We evaluate pharmaceutical price dynamics for not reference priced pharmaceuticals (NRPs) as well as for reference priced pharmaceuticals (RPs) in Germany—referring to the internal reference price system. 64,862 medication packs have been extracted from the German pharmaceutical pricing register Lauer-Taxe. For each pack, we extracted detailed data on the company, manufacturer rebates, pharmacy retail prices, reference prices, co-payments, import quotas, and discount agreements. We then investigated price setting and dynamics of NRPs vs. RPs for all 14 indication areas by ATC code level 1. RESULTS: The average manufacturer price per pack was 604.84€ for NRPs and 112.11€ for RPs. Similar differences were found for the wholesale price and the pharmacy retail price. The reference price was—as expected—0.00€ for NRPs, and 154.40€ for RPs. NRP packs were imported in 42.38%, while RP packs were imported only in 24.62%. Highest average pharmacy retail prices could be found in the therapeutic areas ‘antineoplastic and immunomodulating agents’ (1711.47€), ‘systemic hormonal preparations’ (1331.95€), and ‘blood and blood forming organs’ (1260.58€). We detected high fluctuations in pharmacy retail prices per indication, as well as for reference prices per indication. The indications with the highest number of reference price regulated medical packs are ‘cardiovascular system’, ‘musculo-skeletal system’, and ‘nervous system’. Highest co-payments were found in the indications ‘antineoplastic and immunomodulating agents’, ‘blood and blood forming organs’, and ‘antiinfectives for systemic use’. CONCLUSION: Price setting and price dynamics vary substantially between NRP and RP medication packs. Further, we saw major differences across all indication areas as well as when comparing medication packs launched by top 20 pharma companies vs. the rest. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40545-022-00451-x.