OBJECTIVES: The magnitude of potential delays in market access for selected pharmaceutical innovations in Korea and Taiwan has prompted significant discussion on future actions that can expedite market access for innovative products in these HTA countries. The objective of this analysis is to understand how recent HTA decisions may impact access to innovative pharmaceuticals in these markets, and identify the drivers to inform future launches in Korea and Taiwan. METHODS: The latest HTA policies for Korea and Taiwan were assessed, by examining HTA decisions by authorities on these analogues; products with diverging decisions were identified.   RESULTS: Although Korea and Taiwan were found to have converged on most of analogue decisions, divergence was found to occur in 30% of decisions dating back to 2012. By examining Drug Reimbursement Evaluation Committee (DREC) decisions from 2007 to present, little evidence was found to indicate that positive reimbursement decisions by Korea’s Health Insurance Review Agency (HIRA) had been rising via HTA methodology. Tremendous downward pressure on prices are supported by the selection of steadily decreasing comparator prices, and the general difficulty of achieving pricing higher than the selected comparator.   Oncology drugs specifically were found to have been facing critical access issues, such as timing delays and low reimbursement rates. CONCLUSIONS: Excessive dependence on HTA limits new drug access by continuously lowering the price benchmark, which in turn threatens the sustainability of pharmaceutical innovation, suggesting that alternative methods of drug evaluation may need to be explored.