External ref price reevals will be carried out as planned

but government plans to carry out ample discussions with the industry

Will continue working-level discussions until February... no problems for its implementation next year

The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service decided to thoroughly discuss its external reference price reevaluation plan with the industry.

 

Although the government’s original plan of preparing a final draft by December is also expected to be postponed somewhat due to the prolonged discussions, HIRA explained that there is no change to its policy in starting the reevaluations next year.

 

According to industry sources on the 29th, at the 2nd meeting on the external reference price reevaluation held on the 24th, HIRA accepted the pharmaceutical industry's opinion to continue working-level discussions until February next year when the final plan is set.

 

Due to prolonged discussions, the final plan is expected to be prepared after February next year.

 

Initially, HIRA planned to prepare final guidelines by December after several discussions with the industry.

 

An industry official said, "At the meeting, the industry raised the opinion that more time was needed, so we decided to continue discussions until February.

 

Specific details will likely come out after further meetings are held." Although the preparation of the final plan has been delayed, the government has confirmed that its policy of starting reevaluations next year remains unchanged.

 

A HIRA official explained, “If we prepare well while gathering industry opinion, there will likely be no problem in conducting the first evaluation next year even if the final reevaluation plan is released after February.” Starting next year, HIRA plans to sequentially conduct reevaluations on the price of listed off-patent drugs, mainly chronic disease drugs, based on their overseas drug price.

 

The price adjustments made through the reevaluations are planned to be applied from January of the following year.

 

At the first meeting, the government had only disclosed the principle of comparing the highest price of each drug in the A8 countries (USA, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Japan, Canada) with the highest price in Korea, and decided to discuss further details in further meetings.

 

The HIRA official added, “We plan to decide on subject drugs for the first year and other specifics after discussing with the industry.

 

Internally, HIRA has already prepared a plan.”