Value-Based Pricing: Do Not Throw Away the Baby with the Bath Water

Excerpt

At a recent meeting in Amsterdam about fair pricing, which was sponsored by the UN Health Agency and the Dutch Government, the WHO Assistant Director-General Marie-Paule Kieny suggested value-based pricing is not feasible for a product that is indispensable. There were ‘serious reservations’ about a system that essentially puts a value on a life and then allows a drug to be priced up to that level [1]. If that was the approach behind value-based pricing then, indeed, this approach should be rejected. If we were to consider the (emotional) willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a life, then this would most likely lead to very high values. Systematically applying such (too) high values in reimbursement decisions could not be borne by the limited budgetary resources. …