Pricing of pharmaceuticals (original) (raw)

Every government is eager to control the increase in expenses by the implementation of central cost containment policies, particularly in relation to pharmaceuticals. For the most part those measures have relied on budgeting or price controls, including negotiated prospective budgets for hospitals,centralized negotiated budgets for ambulatory physicians including drug prescriptions, and limitations on payments for particular medications.Because those traditional central cost containment measures were only partially successful, due to lack of incentives, the health authorities in Europe started to establish incentives for efficient health care delivery.Both traditional and recent containment measures focus especially on the pharmaceutical drugs sector in many countries,as these constitute a health technology that is relatively easy to introduce and implement compared to other forms of care.