OBJECTIVES: In Hungary, there is no regular price revision for originator products, so it is reasonable to assume that the distributor of the originator product would not in principle reduce the price. In 2010, the rules of the active substance or therapy based reference pricing were significantly tightened, allowing for a reduction in drug budget expenditure. In our research, we investigate how much the reference price reimbursement, which has been in place since 2011, has been able to reduce pharmaceutical expenditure and how much it has saved.

METHODS: All publicly available quarterly reports about reference price-based groups and drug funding summaries from 2010 up to December 2021 were analysed. During the period under review, we identified newly reference price-based groups and examined the extent of savings for these groups. The savings were considered as the difference between the actual expenditure of these new groups and the theoretical assumption on the amount of drugs used at the pre-fixed price.

RESULTS: During the study period, 131 new reference price-based groups were identified. The nervous system (44%), the cardiovascular system (15%) and the Antineoplastic and immunomodulating agents (14%) are the three most common areas in which these groups were formed. Savings can be observed in 122 groups under the reference price-based reimbursement, with savings exceeding HUF 1-10 billion for 48 groups and HUF 10-10 billion over the years for 8 groups.

CONCLUSIONS: In the majority of the newly reference-price based groups created, this solution is a retentionist one.