Association between medicine Price declaration by pharmaceutical industries and retail prices in Malaysia’s private healthcare sector

Abstract

Background As part of the initiatives to increase price transparency for consumers, pharmaceutical industry in Malaysia have been encouraged to declare the wholesale and recommended retail prices (RRP) of medicines to the Pharmaceutical Service Department (PSD) yearly. However, the relationship between the voluntary price reporting practices and consumers’ retail medicine price is unknown. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the effect of the voluntary price reporting practice of pharmaceutical industry on retail medicine prices, factors that may affect consumer medicine prices in Malaysia’s private healthcare sector, and the retail medicine pricing trend over 2011–2015. Methods A yearly correlation test for a 5-year period was performed to investigate the association between the wholesale and RRP medicine prices declared by the pharmaceutical industry from 2011 to 2015 on the one hand and the consumer wholesale and retail medicine price database on the other hand. The median price ratio (MPR) was calculated by comparing the consumer retail medicine price to its international reference price. The Krukal Wallis test was used to analyse the pricing trend throughout the 5-year period, and factors that might elevate the MPR above 2.5 were modelled using binary logistic regression. Results A total of 2527 medicine price data were analysed. There was a strong significant association between medicine prices declared to the PSD and the retail medicine prices in every year of the 5-year period. Moreover, there was no significant increase in retail medicine prices throughout the 5-year period. The medicine types, retail location, type of manufacturer, medicinal indications, declared wholesale and RRPs significantly influenced the consumer MPRs that where > 2.5. Conclusion The declared medicine price was found to have a significant association with the consumer retail medicine price. Thus, it may be a useful reference for consumers purchasing medicines in private healthcare settings. However, the government of Malaysia must develop strategies to increase medicine price transparency for price-control mechanisms in the private healthcare sector. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s40545-019-0176-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Evaluating Price and Availability of Essential Medicines in China: A Mixed Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Study

“…This shows that effective and efficient procurement policies and interventions promoting the development of retail pharmacies are needed. In addition, strategies to increase medicine price transparency in the private sector may lead to increased access to medicines in the long term ( Ahmad et al, 2019 ).…”

Rapid Assessment of Price Instability and Paucity of Medicines and Protection for COVID-19 Across Asia: Findings and Public Health Implications for the Future

“…The final agreed price for essential medicines in the public system should also ideally be no more than three times the International Reference Price (IRP) (106). However, there are currently a lack of price controls for medicines and other technologies in the private sector including mark-ups, which can add to the cost of medicines (108,109). This lack of control is seen in the price of medicines for treating ischaemic heart disease (IHD) where the lowest price of generics or originator brands to treat IHD were 10.77 and 24.09 times, respectively, above IRPs, and can make these medicines unaffordable for the average worker who purchases them in community pharmacies rather than attending primary healthcare clinics (PHCs) with their long waiting times (110)(111)(112).…”

Evidence on the effectiveness of policies promoting price transparency - A systematic review

“…These references are considered to be one study in this review, according to Cochrane guidelines. Six studies were excluded, because of a lack of a historical control [24] , [25] , [26] , primary outcomes of interest were not reported [27] , theoretical effects were studied [28] and one study was considered off-topic after reading the full text [29] .…”