Influencing « Policy Options » at the OECD: The Promotion of Value-Based Pricing by Pharmaceutical Companies

• In Event: Corporate Influence on Science and Regulation – III

Abstract

Since 2014, The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has decided to produce an expertise about the economic regulation of “innovative” drugs. The crisis that follows the Sofosbuvir case has lead the OECD countries to restrain access to the drug for financial reasons. It has been the starting point of a major public problem and issue for this organisation: how conciliate access to innovative therapies while making health care expenditures sustainable for health care systems? This is the question the OECD tries to answer since 2014 with the implementation of a working group on drugs prices regulation. But of course this expert group is a target for those who want to influence knowledge production by the OECD. The importance of OECD as a body of expertise that produces normative knowledge lead corporate actors to work on influencing the reports this organisation publishes. This task and “corporate influence” are devoted to one specific entity named the Business and Industry Advisory Committee (BIAC) also named “Business at the OECD”. This communication shows that BIAC but more generally the representatives of pharmaceutical companies advocate against some “policy options” that the OECD could mention in the report published in 2019 especially the field of patent law. One of the policy options the BIAC and the representatives of pharmaceutical companies want to promote is the “value-based pricing” (VBP) that is to say a mechanism that complicates drugs assessment. This research is based on an ethnographic observation at the OECD and on 15 interviews with health economists at the OECD, former member of BIAC.

Author

• Pierre-André Juven, CNRS