By Patricia Weiss
FRANKFURT, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Germany’s statutory health insurers face $6.2 billion in additional costs if the country raises drug prices in response to pressure from US President Donald Trump, with little benefit to the US, a Harvard Medical School study showed on Wednesday.
The study’s estimate was based on a 25% price increase scenario in Germany, similar to a recent deal between the US and Britain under Trump’s “most-favoured-nation” pricing policy which seeks to tie some US medicine prices to those paid in other wealthy countries.
By comparison, this would result in $301 million additional US Medicaid programme spending a year.
Germany’s National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds, which initiated the study in collaboration with the research team, said the findings support its position.
“The result is therefore not a shift of financing burdens from the US to Germany, but higher drug spending on both sides,” Stefanie Stoff-Ahnis, the association’s deputy chair of the executive board, told Reuters.
The association paid fees to the study’s lead author and supplied aggregated prescription data. The research team said it conducted the study independently and had full control over the findings.
PRESSURE ON DRUG PRICES
Trump’s policy seeks to tie US drug prices to those in a group of reference countries that includes Germany. The pharmaceutical industry has argued that low prices in Germany could reduce its revenue prospects in the lucrative US market.
In June, the head of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations, a drugmakers’ lobby group, warned that Europe risked losing investment if prices do not rise. Eli Lilly and Boehringer Ingelheim have already scaled back planned investments in Germany worth billions.
The study found Germany is often used as a benchmark in US pricing models shortly after a drug’s launch because new medicines typically reach the German market early.
The study said Germany is already one of the more expensive countries in the US reference basket. If German prices increased, lower-priced countries such as Denmark or France would become the relevant benchmark for the US, it added.
Stoff-Ahnis said Germany should maintain an independent approach to price regulation and not give into pressure from the US.
(Reporting by Patricia Weiss in Frankfurt, additional reporting by Holger Hansen; Writing by Marleen Kaesebier and Bhanvi Satija; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
