Expert believes new pricing mechanism will have the biggest impact on cheapest drugs
Arminas Macevičius, STADA Vice President for the Eurasia Region, noted in an interview with Forbes that the changes to the order of the Minister of Health No. ҚР ДСМ-247/2020 radically change the approaches to pricing in the pharmaceutical market. And this could become a potential problem for the entire drug market.
"The existing pricing system was generally good, price containment worked, so many industry participants believe that there is no need to change anything radically. However, the changes came into force, and this may have serious consequences for the entire market. There was a precedent in Azerbaijan with the introduction of similar regulations, as a result of which, from 2014, ten thousand names on the market were reduced to only six thousand in five years. In addition, gray imports appeared, for which people began to travel to neighboring Turkey. In general, the market became unattractive, and many companies left it, simply closing their representative offices. People lost their jobs, there were other negative economic consequences typical for such scenarios," said A. Matsevichus.
In the case of Kazakhstan, in his opinion, the proposed change in the approach to pricing will have the greatest impact on the cheapest drugs, whose prices should decrease by an order of magnitude.
"Based on the new model, the prices of the cheapest drugs should decrease by almost 30% compared to the current ones, but this is unrealistic, given the relatively low margins of the market as a whole, and especially this low-cost segment in particular," Matsevichus is sure. "These drugs may simply disappear from the market, since they will not be able to meet the new conditions. As a result, there will be a shortage of affordable drugs. In addition, the range as a whole will decrease, and instead of having a choice of ten drugs with different properties, patients will be forced to choose from a significantly smaller number. In my opinion, this is wrong, since all drugs have different additional effects, dosages, compatibility with other drugs and other parameters."