How Innovation drives drug spending

The expenditure of the statutory health insurance for medicinal products (excluding vaccines) and test diagnostics have increased to 17.6 billion euros in the first half of 2015 by 6.3 percent.

Here, the statutory deductions that manufacturers and pharmacies must give the
insurance companies, already taken into account, but not the savings that result from manufacturers and banks individual discount agreements.

Not yet registered are also patient co-payments. This is evident from the data that the market research institute IMS Health has published on Thursday.

The biggest growth in antiviral agent

The growth of spending is roughly equivalent to the order that has been established in the autumn of last year in the Framework Agreement between KBV and SHI Head Association.

It was assumed that innovation is the determining growth factor. This expectation has been confirmed in the first half.

Three quarters of growth go back to three drug groups: The largest share (51 per cent) attributable to antiviral agents (excluding HIV drugs), and in particular since February 2014 newly introduced hepatitis preparations.

A further 14 per cent can be attributed to increased use of medicines against macular degeneration. This, too, had been considered separately in the framework agreement, because with the inclusion of intravitreal injection in the Uniform Value Scale a lot of increase had been expected.

Another eleven percent of output growth can be explained by the increased use of direct factor Xa inhibitors for the prophylaxis of thrombosis and embolism in cardiovascular disease.

Issue that stimulates but also impacted the growing consumption of drugs. The number of packages sold in the entire SHI market grew by two per cent. There are, however, significant differences in the regulation of (innovative) patented drugs and generics:

In the off-patent medicines, the consumption grows almost completely by more regulations of N3-packs (plus five percent), among other reasons, because these drugs are often used to combat chronic diseases. 140 of a total of 230 million packages have the package size N3.

 Decline, the market for off-patent protection is Altoriginale

By contrast, patented drugs are increasingly being used in the packaging size N1 (plus eight percent). This seems to be the case at least during the initiation of a new therapy.

Only 9.3 out of 25.4 million packages which account for bulk pack. On the other hand continues to decline, the market is the Altoriginale with expired patent protection. The minus amounts to six million or two percent.

A significant impact on the consumption of the drug had the unusually strong flu and cold wave in the first half. She explains IMS 40 percent of the volume increases.

SHI and private health insurance were significantly relieved by legal manufacturers haircuts. They got a total of 1.353 billion euros.

It benefited state-owned company with an increase by 25 percent to 1.155 billion Euro slightly stronger than the PKV, with the sum of reductions by 17 percent to 198 million euros.

This is due to a base effect from the previous year: As of April 1 2014, the legal manufacturer discount of six was raised to seven percent. The statutory discount pharmacies remained almost constant at EUR 561 million.