Germany's VFA reports drug prices stable

Despite the expiry of a moratorium for drug prices on April 1, data released by the German research-based pharmaceutical industry association (VFA) indicate that costs remain lower than for the previous year. The findings were made from current market data generated by the market research institute, Insight Health, which was commissioned for the VFA.

About 92% of the approximately 84,000 individual products examined by the study have unchanged prices compared with the previous year. Meanwhile, 4.4% of medicines were cheaper and 3.8% were more costly. Because of price reductions made in the course of the last 12 months, the overall effect has been a 1.4% decline in revenues.

The VFA notes that, by contrast, general consumer prices rose in the same period over 2%. Cornelia Yzer, the VFA's chief executive, said: "the bottom line is that medicine prices remained stable in the course of the last 12 months. Admittedly, some patent-protected preparations and parallel-imported goods did increase in price, but these have had no relevance for the market as a whole. Altogether, we observe calm on the price front for years. And there are no indications that anything is about to change."