For nearly 25 years, the most effective tool for containing public spending on pharmaceutical drugs in Germany is the formation of fixed reference price groups (FRPG) - the annual savings have continuously risen from 0.31 billion Euros in 1990 to 4.32 billion Euros in 2009. Hereunder, the so-called “jumbo groups” (patent-free and patented substances) that were introduced with the SHI Modernization Act of 2004 have been of high importance. With the recently published, first-time call for benefit assessments of substances in the established market (April 2013), the Federal Joint Committee (FJC) has yet launched another potent mean of reducing costs. Unlike the early benefit assessment of new active ingredients where several substances have undergone scrutiny since January 2011, it is unclear what the outlook is for the substances in the established market. Therefore, the objective of the presentation is to assess whether a FRPG or a benefit assessment is to be preferred by pharmaceutical companies for established substances. Fixed reference price scenarios are calculated for therapeutically comparable substance classes within the call for benefit assessment of substances in the established German drug market. For the established substances, a risk assessment and benchmark is performed based on the criteria in the code of procedure of the FJC and the assessment of new active ingredients, respectively. The results of the ongoing FRPG scenario evaluation will be displayed as bar charts by savings in €. The risk assessment is displayed in a tabular format. Apart from discussing the results of the FRPG calculations compared to the benefit assessment of established substances, the presentation discusses implications for international reference pricing, since the German market has been regarded as the last bastion of free pharmaceutical pricing for a long time.