OBJECTIVES

Providing access to cancer treatments by obtaining a price and reimbursement is a challenge that keeps growing as more innovative and expensive drugs are entering the market. This analysis aims to assess the impact of “free” pricing systems vs “controlled” pricing systems on the time to market and the availability of oncology drugs in the EU5 countries.

METHODS

New molecular entities in oncology with a centralized marketing authorization were analyzed over a 5-year period (2013-2017). The compared pricing systems are qualified as “controlled” (France, Italy, Spain) when an intervention from the health authorities is required in the drug pricing process and as “free” (Germany, UK) when it is not. The availability and time to market were assessed respectively by calculating the presence of a product in each country and the time to pricing (i.e., the time from marketing authorization to price publication) using the IHS database (cut-off date on February 1, 2019). Appropriate statistical analyses were used.

RESULTS

A total of 55 selected drugs were assessed in each country. The UK and Germany (UK-Germany) showed a significantly higher drug availability rate and a significantly lower time to pricing than Spain and France (Spain-France) (P<0.0001). Italy showed no significant difference in the availability rate compared with the pooled UK-Germany data (P=0.0917). Italy sets itself apart by being significantly lower than UK-Germany (P=0.0209), but significantly higher than France-Spain (P<0.0001) in terms of time to pricing.

CONCLUSIONS

This analysis reflects the duality of speed in Europe in terms of market access for oncology drugs. Patients get faster access to their treatments in countries with “free” pricing systems compared with countries with “controlled” pricing systems. However, Italy still manages to distinguish itself in terms of time to market, even closing the gap with the UK and Germany in terms of drug availability.