Pharmaceutical Pricing, Reimbursement, and Prescribing News in the Fourth Quarter of 2006

Implementation and refinement of existing pricing and reimbursement initiatives throughout the major pharmaceutical markets continued to be a major theme in the fourth quarter of 2006. In the United States, preparations continued for the second year of the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. In Europe, while the European Union took action to promote common standards for health technology assessment, individual governments continued to pursue independent national cost-containment strategies. And in Japan, implementation of revised price premiums earlier in the year has benefited manufacturers of useful and innovative drugs. Get the Answers You Need to Shape Your Strategy: In the United States, the midterm Congressional elections dominated the news. What implications will this change of power have on U.S. health care policy? How will the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries respond to this new political landscape? The German government has proposed significant health care reforms. How will these reforms affect health insurance, physician reimbursement, hospitals, and the pharmaceutical market? What new freedoms and what new constraints will result? Governments in the major pharmaceutical markets continue to refine regulations on drug pricing and reimbursement. How will these refinements affect the pharmaceutical markets in these countries? Will certain drug classes in certain countries actually benefit from these reforms? The steady expansion of reference pricing across Europe exemplifies governments' tendency to imitate each other, while they simultaneously pursue their disparate national strategies for containing health care costs. In such a climate, is there any hope for harmonized reimbursement standards? Please note, the PDF e-mail from publisher version of this report is for a global site license.

Additional Information

Scope:
Fourth quarter news in 2006: major events in the pharmaceutical pricing, reimbursement, and prescribing environment in the United States, Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom), and Japan.
Cost-containment programs: measures that health care payers are using to curb their drug expenditures and to improve patient access to medications.
Outlook: our assessment of the implications of these events for the pharmaceutical industry in the major markets under study.

Mentioned in This Spectrum Report:
Organizations:
Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des
Produits de Santé (AFSSAPS; French Agency for
the Safety of Health Products)
Allgemeine Ortskrankenkassen (Local General
Health Insurance Funds)
Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO)
Bundesfachverband der Arzneimittelhersteller
(BAH; Federal Association of Pharmaceutical
Manufacturers)
Bundesverband der Betriebskrankenkassen (BKK;
Federal Association of Occupational Health
Insurance Funds)
Bundesvereinigung Deutscher Apothekerverbände
(ABDA; Federal Union of German Pharmacists’
Associations)
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
(CMS)
Chuikyo (Central Social Insurance Medical
Council)
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
European Network for Health Technology
Assessment (HTA)
Farmaindustria
Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuß der Ärzte,
Zahnärzte, Krankenhäuser und Krankenkassen
(GBA; Joint Federal Committee of Physicians,
Dentists, Hospitals, and Health Insurance Funds)
Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung (GKV; statutory
health insurance)
Haute Autorité de Santé (HAS; National Health
Authority)
High-Level Group on Innovation and the Provision
of Medicines (G10 Medicines Group)
High-Level Pharmaceutical Forum
House Energy and Commerce Committee’s
Subcommittee on Health
Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im
Gesundheitswesen (IQWiG; Institute for Quality
and Economy in the Health Care System)
Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung (KBV; Federal
Union of Health Insurance Fund Physicians)
National Health Service (NHS)
National Institute for Health and Clinical
Excellence (NICE)
Osservatorio Nazionale sull’Impiego dei
Medicinali (OsMed; National Observatory on
Pharmaceutical Spending)
Servizio Sanitario Nazionale (SSN; National
Health Service)
Sistema Nacional de Salud (SNS; National Health
System)

Companies:
EnvisionRx Plus
Express Scripts
First Databank
Health Net
Humana
Ipsen
Longs Drug Stores
McKesson
Medi-Span
Merck KGaA
NewQuest Health Solutions
NMHC Systems
Roche
Thomson’s Red Book
Torchmark