A pilot project aimed to register the minimal selling price for cancer and cardiovascular diseases drugs in Belarus allowed to reduce prices for individual drugs by 65%
According to Decree No. 345 “On the registration of prices for medicines,” maximal selling price are calculated on the basis of reference pricing, considering data on the cost of drugs in 14 countries similar in terms of drug treatment. Only drugs with registered prices could be presented on Belarusian market.
The experiment is planned to be continued. The draft of the corresponding decree states to expand the list to 450 names of essential medicines next year. This will be implemented in stages: first, the list will be expanded for cardiovascular drugs, then to drugs for IVF, gastrointestinal tract diseases, etc.
The Russian pharmaceutical market is regulated in a similar way. The prices for certain drugs were compared in thirty reference countries. They excluded the lowest and highest; from the remaining they chose the lower limit of the average level. Then the prices are registered considering this indicator. This approach made it possible to reduce the cost for more than thousand vital medicines. For individual items, the decline reached tenfold.