Medicine prices and pharmaceutical pricing regulation in the Nordic countries

Pharmaceutical costs form an integral part of healthcare spending in all developed countries: In Finland, the total sales of pharmaceuticals is around EUR 3 billion per year. A key part of the pharmaceutical market’s price formation process is regulation. Regulation affects not only prices but also what medicines are available on which markets. In the case of the pharmaceutical market, it is common for a single product to be subject to several simultaneous regulatory measures. This project aims to determine the combined effect of regulatory measures on the prices of medicines in the Nordic pharmaceutical market.

In addition, the project examines problems related to the availability of medicines and how the price list for medicines and changes in VAT are reflected in the consumer prices (passthrough). The project aims to answer the following questions: (i) What is the combined effect of pharmaceutical pricing regulation?  (ii) What market-level impacts are caused by problems in the availability of medicines? (iii) How changes in the price list for medicines and VAT are reflected in the prices of medicines for consumers? The research is based on previously collected pharmaceutical-level data from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark (T217). This type of data, when combined with publicly available demographic data and other such materials, will allow us to address the project’s research questions.

Responsible researcher: Markku Siikanen, [email protected], +358 295 519 505