OHE’s submission to Belgium’s Committee on Health and Equal Opportunities argues value-based pricing delivers a ‘triple-win’

Professor Graham Cookson, OHE’s Chief Executive, was invited to respond to two draft bills on drug pricing discussed in the Committee on Health and Equal Opportunities of the Belgian House of Representatives.

The two draft bills focus on compulsory insurance for medical care and benefits, one in regards to fair and objective prices for medicines, and the other to enable the pricing of medicines or pharmaceutical specialities to be based on transparent and objective criteria.

Professor Cookson’s response proposes a value-based approach to pricing, which would allow:
• Healthcare systems to appropriately reward innovation.
• Access to the most valuable innovations to be prioritised.
• Price signals to be aligned with patient and societal priorities.
• The level of investment in pharmaceuticals, and the level of expected innovation in the pipeline, to reflect their value to society.

A value-based approach would therefore deliver the ‘triple win’: providing patients with access to the latest innovations, in a way that is sustainable for health systems, whilst ensuring that ongoing investment in the research and development of new treatments is incentivised.

Any other pricing system, Professor Cookson argues, would be less efficient in signalling what society values and incentivising the right kind, amount, and quality of innovation.

The full submission can be accessed below.