OBJECTIVES: Assessment on the appropriateness for reimbursement of new drugs by the Health Insurance Review and Assessment services (HIRA) and negotiation between the National Health Insurance Corporation (NHIC) and pharmaceutical companies are conducted for determining the price of them after adapting positive list system in Korea. In this study, we evaluated the relationship between the results of the negotiation and the characteristics of the drugs as well as reimbursement decisions in order to identify factors affecting the price. METHODS: The price cut rate between the company suggesting price accepted by the HIRA and the negotiated price with the NHIC was calculated by the characteristics of drugs which had completed the negotiation from 2007 to 2011. Mann-Whitney test were used to identify any significant differences in the rate with regard to the drugs and regression analysis was carried out to explore which variables are likely to influence the rate. RESULTS: The negotiation of 145 ingredients of new drugs were completed for 5 years and 109 of them were successfully reached on the agreement(75.2%). There were no differences in negotiation rate by the characteristics of the drugs. The average price cut rate of negotiated drugs was 19% (n=109, range 0 - 77%). The conditionally accepted drugs (n=19) with the price recommended by the HIRA had significantly higher rate than the others(33% vs 16%, p<0.0001). In addition, that of 71 which failed to demonstrate clinically meaningful improvement was higher than the others, but showed no significance (21% vs. 15%). ‘Rule of rescue’ or anticancer drugs showed no significant impact on the rate. The annual net budget cost and acceptance of the HIRA recommending price, however, significantly affected the rate(p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: This study might be helpful for identifying the factors that affect the reimbursement price of the new drugs and enhancing the predictability for the price.