• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.303-313
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• 2018

This study considers time series models to forecast drug expenditures in national health insurance. We adopt autoregressive error model (ARE) and transfer function model (TFM) with segmented level and trends (before and after 2012) in order to reflect drug price reduction in 2012. The ARE has only a segmented deterministic term to increase the forecasting performance, while the TFM explains a causality mechanism of drug expenditure with closely related exogenous variables. The mechanism is developed by cross-correlations of drug expenditures and exogenous variables. In both models, the level change appears significant and the number of drug users and ratio of elderly patients variables are significant in the TFM. The ARE tends to produce relatively low forecasts that have been influenced by a drug price reduction; however, the TFM does relatively high forecasts that have appropriately reflected the effects of exogenous variables. The ARIMA model without the exogenous variables produce the highest forecasts.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.360-368
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• 2018

Background: The proportion of pharmaceutical expenditure out of total health-care expenditure in South Korea is high. In 2016, 25.7% of national health insurance (NHI) spending was for pharmaceuticals. Given the increasing demands for the access to newly introduced medicines and following increase in pharmaceutical spending, the management of NHI pharmaceutical expenditure is becoming more difficult. Methods: This study analyzed the data claimed to NHI for pharmaceutical reimbursement from 2010 to 2016. Results: The policy implications with respect to the trends and problems in spending by drug groups were elicited. First, the proportion of off-patent drugs spending which were treated to chronic disease was much higher than anti-cancer drug spending. Second, the spending to the newly introduced high-costed medicine increased, however, current price-reduction mechanism was not sufficient to manage their expenditure efficiently. Conclusion: Our system seems to need several revisions to improve the efficiency of pharmaceutical expenditure and to cope with high-costed medicines. This study suggested that the prices of off-patent drugs need to be regularly readjusted and the Price-Volume Agreement System should be operated more flexibly as well.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.65-86
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• 1999

In this study, we investigate the welfare effect of mandatory prescription(MP) in Korea. An immediate effect of MP is the increase in the implicit price of prescribed medicine, which could be obtained easily from drug stores before MP. This will lower the quantity demanded. which will in turn reduce the abuse of drugs. The key to the cost-benefit analysis of MP, therefore, should be focused on this point; price increase in the cost side and quantity decrease in the benefit side. Since we do not have as much information as needed for the analysis, however, we made strong assumptions for the clarity of numbers; the severity of moral hazard of medical doctors related to the sales of hospital drugs, constant demand elasticity, constant benefit multiplier of reduced drug usage, and so on, With these rather strong assumptions, we find that i) the benefit side is much more sensitive to demand elasticity than the cost side effect ii) the larger the demand elasticity, the greater the size of net gain of MP, though the result depends on the size of the benefit multiplier. This analysis shows that we need to have more information on the specific institutional path of health benefit diffusion caused by the reduction of drug usage, which was the major target of MP.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.103-111
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• 2013

Seven diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) prospective payment system is going to expand to all hospitals including university hospitals this year. However there are few studies on the change of practice pattern under prospective payment system in the university hospital setting. So This study was intended to predict the practice pattern change after the introduction of 7 DRGs prospective payment system in a university hospital setting. To predict the change of practice pattern, this study used simulation technique. Five hundred and nineteen patients classified as 5 DRGs in a university hospital were selected for simulation. The change of practice pattern were predicted based on clinicians' opinion. We also predicted payment change by service items. Major findings of this study are as follows. First, the total medical payment was reduced by 14.4%. The drug payment change (8.8%) took most of total payment reduction. The followings are the change of treatment material cost (3.2%), the change of laboratory tests cost (1.8%), the change of room charge (0.5%), and other payment change (0.1%), respectively. Second, most of the reduction in total medical payment resulted from the decreased amount of medical services themselves. The transfer of medical services to outpatient setting took up only 4.9% of the total payment reduction. The change of unit price or composition took up 5.5% of the total payment reduction. In this study we found that it is possible to reduce the inpatient services through practice pattern change in university hospital setting. However, it needs to be careful to adjust DRG payment after the reduction of provided services, because most of reduction was not due to service transfer but to service volume reduction. It is desirable to utilize the saving from practice pattern change as incentive to improve quality of care.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.484-494
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• 2000

Objective : To evaluate the relative benefits and the costs associated with the introduction of the new pharmaceutical provision called 'Mandatory Prescription System' which separates the role of physicians from that of pharmacists with respect to the prescription and dispensation of from the perspective of consumers (i.e., patients). Methods : The costs of the system were measured by considering both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs included additional payments for ambulatory care and dispensing fees that occurred under the new system. indirect costs consisted of transportation expenses and costs related to time spent for physician consultation, waiting for the prescriptions to be filled, and extra traveling. Benefits identified in this study were the reduction of drug misuse and overuse, and the overall decrease in drug consumption among the Korean population. Sensitivity analysis was peformed for the inclusion of benefits for outpatients of hospitals, price elasticity, and increased fees for established patients. Results : The net benefit was estimated to be about minus 1,862 billion won and the benefit-cost ratio was 0.478. This indicates that the costs of 'Mandatory Prescription' outweigh its benefits, relative to the previous system. The sensitivity analysis results for all the variables considered in this study consistently showed the benefit-cost ratio to be less than 1. Conclusion : The results of this study suggest that implementing Mandatory Prescription System in Korea might be inefficient from the consumer's perspective. The results of this study do not coincide with the results of previous studies, presumably because of the differences in study design and in which items of costs and benefits were considered.

• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.91-124
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• 2021

In May 2019, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety revised the "Pharmaceutical Determination and Adjustment Criteria" with the content of differentially calculating the price of generic drugs according to the registration of the drug substance and meeting the requirements for their own bioequivalence test. According to this revised rule, if their own bioequivalence test is not conducted, even the generic drugs that have already been approved would be lowered in price. I wondered whether this system was introduced with sufficient public legal considerations regarding its legislative purposes and means. Therefore, I reviewed the contents of the revised notice based on whether or not it is valid to determine and adjust the price of generic drugs in terms of the legitimacy of legislative purposes and the proportionality principle after introducing the history and background of the rule. First, I raised a question as to whether the purpose of preventing the overrun of generic drugs is indeed legitimate in terms of the legitimacy of the purpose. In order for the revised notice of "reduction of drug prices when the test requirements are not met," to meet the conformity principle, the premise that it is difficult to recognize safety and effectiveness through consignment (joint) bioequivalence test or that these tests are insufficient in safety and efficacy verification than their own test must be established. Nevertheless, it seems that suffficient review has not been carried out. In order to achieve the purpose of securing safety and effectiveness, the focus should be on 'reinforcement of the standards for bioequivalence test and the management of the bioequivalence test itself' rather than whether it is a their own test or a consignment (joint) test. Third, it is contrary to the necessity and substantiality principle that strict standards are uniformly applied to the products that can be considered to have been sufficiently verified for safety and effectiveness after a considerable period of time has passed after the product approval. In many cases, revised administrative legislations quickly enacted and amended in the state of lack of legal review or consensus, while the regulatory effects resulting from it are quite direct and specific to the regulated person. In this respect, I emphasized that the administrative legislative process also requires substantial review and prior control of the regulatory purposes and means, and that the participation of stakeholders in the legislative procedure is to be strengthened.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.5-30
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• 2005

Globalization has conflicting effects on pharmaceutical policies. A change into a 'populist competitive nation' due to globalization strengthens policies to reduce drug manufacturing costs while the WTO's TRIPS Agreement that is affected by multinational pharmaceutical companies increases drug manufacturing costs by bolstering the patent rights on new drugs. Currently, the independency of populist nations' policies to reduce drug manufacturing cost is being compromised because multinational organizations(such as the European Union) which represents the interests of the multinational pharmaceutical companies put restrictions on the pharmaceutical policies of populist nations for purposes of promoting the industrial goals of the multinational companies. Korea is no exception. Up until the late 1990s, the main feature of the pharmaceutical policies in Korea was keeping the drug price at the cost level based on a growth-driven ideology, and this was Korea's unique policy tools as a developing nation. However, the increase in the power of multinational pharmaceutical companies currently infringes on the independency of Korea's pharmaceutical policies. Expensive imported drugs were originally covered by the national health insurance plan, but starting from 1999 such drugs began to be covered by the plan. After separation of medical and pharmaceutical services, the use of expensive drugs was increased, and the Korean government planned to introduce the reference price policy in order to contain the cost of the national health insurance plan. However, due to pressures from the U.S. government as well as multinational pharmaceutical companies, implementation of the policy has been postponed. In addition, due to a pressure from the U.S. government, a working group was created which would affect the health care policy of the Korean government. Discussions so far on globalization was about whether the change into populist competitive nations due to globalization resulted in the reduction of welfare spending. However, this study shows not only the reduction of health care cost through policies to reduce drug manufacturing costs but increase in welfare spending by raising the strengths of multinational pharmaceutical companies that are for-profit providers of welfare service. While focusing on the contradictory effects of globalization on pharmaceutical policies of a nation, this study looked at how these conflicting effects end up promoting the interests of multinational pharmaceutical companies by examining the Korean case.

• Journal of Lipid and Atherosclerosis
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.61-77
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• 2016

Objective: This study aims to analyze cost-effectiveness of two most-commonly used statins from the perspective of the Korean national health system. Methods: The scope of the analysis included rosuvastatin (5 mg, 10 mg, and 20 mg) and atorvastatin (10 mg, 20 mg, 40 mg, and 80 mg). Effectiveness was defined as percentage (%) and absolute (mg/dL) reductions of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) from the baseline. They were derived from published randomized controlled studies for rosuvastatin and atorvastatin. Effectiveness was defined as reductions in LDL-C levels per mg dose of the drugs. The annual direct medical costs including drug acquisition costs and monitoring costs over the one-year time horizon were calculated for each alternative. The average cost-effectiveness ratios (ACERs) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) for each statin dose were calculated. Results: The ACERs for all doses of rosuvastatin (5 mg, 10 mg, and 20 mg) were lower than those for all doses of atorvastatin (10 mg, 20 mg, 40 mg, and 80 mg). Rosuvastatin 10 mg was the most cost-effective statin for LDL-C reduction. In cost-effectiveness analyses for corresponding doses of rosuvastatin and atorvastatin, rosuvastatin was the superior strategy which suggests both higher effectiveness and lower costs than atorvastatin. However, we have to consider this analysis is highly influenced by current price of statins in each market. Conclusion: For reduction of LDL-C levels in Korean patients with dyslipidemia, rosuvastatin 10mg is the most cost-effective statin in the current Korean market.