Just Pricing of Pharmaceuticals

Ethical, legal & economic challenges of pharmaceutical pricing

The healthcare sector is witnessing a strong development of innovative pharmaceuticals with a large potential of improving patient and population health. However, these pharmaceuticals will seriously challenge healthcare budgets. Current pricing models cannot meet this challenge and there is a need to develop innovative, just, and sustainable pricing models. The aim of the research project is to explore ethical, judicial, and economic challenges of pharmaceutical pricing with the purpose to develop an ethically, legally, and economically sustainable model för pricing of pharmaceuticals within publicly financed healthcare systems.

The project uses normative analysis to determine what justice-based factors society should be taking into account when deciding what prices to be prepared to pay for pharmaceuticals, such as disease severity, rarity, and treatments’ effects on others. Also, the ethical responsibilities of pharmaceutical companies are scrutinized. This results in pricing models which are assessed legally by investigating to what extent they are compatible with applicable conventions and laws and also economically by investigating how the models affect pharmaceutical incentives for developing new drugs and distribution of opportunity costs. Given the challenges with pharmaceutical pricing for healthcare systems resource sustainability, the project is addressing an increasingly acute societal issue.