Why healthcare market needs government intervention to improve access to essential medicines and healthcare efficiency: a scoping review from pharmaceutical price regulation perspective

BackgroundAccess to quality essential medicines at affordable price to patients in the healthcare market is one of the main goals of universal health coverage and health-related sustainable development goals. Healthcare market is imperfect, and the government cannot ensure access to essential medicines if the market is left to operate under invisible hand control. This scoping review was conducted with intention to provide the clear picture on impact of pharmaceutical price regulation on access to essential medicines, drug innovation and launching.MethodsWe searched articles written in the English language since January 2000 from PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Ovid/Medline and Google scholar with systematic search query.ResultsAccess to essential medicines, which is defined in terms of availability, affordability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of drugs, can be improved by pharmaceutical price regulation. Countries can use different price regulation strategies based on their healthcare objectives and priority healthcare needs. Country-specific pharmaceutical price regulation could not significantly affect drug innovation and launching. However, supportive strategies such as open public funding for drug innovation research, providing innovation awards and strong patent rights can counterbalance the effect of price regulation on innovation and drug development research in developed countries.ConclusionRegulating pharmaceutical pricing system is one of the key strategies to ensure access to essential medicines. Countries that have implemented pharmaceutical price regulation system (Germany, the UK, Canada and Iran) have achieved better access to essential medicines. However, the US and Ethiopian health systems that are unregulated concerning pharmaceutical pricing had a great challenge of affordability of essential medicines. Therefore, setting country-specific pharmaceutical price regulation system along with additional strategies to improve drug innovation is critical to ensure access to essential medicines.