0:00
Hello, my name is Mick Kolassa,
I'm CEO and Managing Partner
of Medical Marketing Economics.
And I'm here to talk about pricing
in the pharmaceutical industry.
0:10
The objectives for this session are,
first to understand how
prices are currently
set in the global
pharmaceutical industry.
Second, to consider the importance
of developing a pricing strategy,
this is as opposed to just
simply setting a price.
We'll move on then to talk about the
elements of pharmaceutical pricing,
the factors that must be considered
when taking any pricing actions.
And finally, to understand
the implications
of specific pricing decisions.
0:38
Because we're talking
about pricing in the global
pharmaceutical industry, we
need to talk about there's
some global differences.
The two largest markets,
the U.S. and the E.U.,
are really quite different.
The U.S. is a free market,
with multiple competing
health care plans, competing
payers, and different formularies.
Product reimbursement can vary
considerably, by individual payer,
a PBM, Pharmaceutical
Benefit Manufacturer,
will tend to have a more generous
benefit than will an HMO.
But it can also vary
within the payer.
An individual PBM may have
several different formularies,
several different ways to
treat the same product,
depending upon the plan sponsor.
Plan sponsor becomes key.
When we look at state Medicaid
plans, which are the health plans
for the indigent, we have 50
different plans in the U.S. and 50
different benefit structures, so
one drug could be treated very
differently from state to state.
Similarly, different employers,
would ask for different plans.
Now when we turn to Europe, in each
of the nations there's going to be
a single monopsonistic
national payer, with generally,
a single national formulary,
relatively uniform
reimbursement status for a product
within an individual country.
There are some countries,
such as Italy and Germany,
that will have some levels
of regional autonomy,
but the differences aren't as
great as they are in the U.S.
And most importantly, patients can't
switch from one plan or one payer
to another, whereas in the
U.S. that's very common.
