Transparency of (real) pharmaceutical costs

Join the second event of the Zooming in on Solution to the Affordability of Medicines webinar series, co-hosted by the European Alliance for Responsible R&D and Affordable Medicines, the European Public Health Alliance, and Global Health Advocates to discuss potential obstacles and ways to establish more transparency of R&D and other real pharmaceutical costs, including the views of different stakeholders.

High prices of new medicines are affecting patient access across Europe. They are justified by industry upon the need to stimulate innovation and to recoup high R&D costs. On the other hand, producers of generic medicines blame low prices as the main cause for the exponential increase of medicine shortages across Europe.

However, the lack of transparency around the real costs for the pharmaceutical sector is an important obstacle for better understanding of what would be fair prices for new and old medicines. In 2019, the second World Health Assembly passed a resolution to improve transparency of markets for health products. The new Pharmaceutical Strategy for Europe also acknowledges that there is a lack of transparency, in particular regarding costs of publicly (co)funded R&D.