Drug pricing and reimbursement

The following session will cover drug pricing and reimbursement, focusing on the factors influencing drug prices, including evolving models like value based and international reference pricing, the central role of health technology assessment in reimbursement decisions across different countries, the diversity of payer systems, and how cost effectiveness, often measured by Caylee, affects access and affordability, and the challenges and future directions in balancing innovation, sustainability, and equitable access to medicines globally. Drug pricing and reimbursement is a central issue in modern healthcare systems. With the arrival of traditional medicines and advanced therapies, like biologics and cell and gene treatments, pricing and reimbursement have grown complex and closely examined. In this session, we will explore how prices are set, the models and key reimbursement pathways, health technology assessment, HTA, cost effectiveness, via quality adjusted life years, and differences in global pricing and access. Setting medicine prices depends on development and manufacturing costs, value to patients and health systems, competition, and pay a willingness to reimburse. Cost plus pricing, based on production costs plus a margin, has often shifted to value based pricing, tying price to therapeutic benefit. International reference pricing, benchmarking against other countries is common. In the United States, list prices are affected by confidential rebates, while in Europe, external reference pricing and managed entry agreements are typical. Health technology assessment or HTA is