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PAPER | The Impact of Health Technology Assessment on Pharmaceutical Prices: Evidence from Germany
News | 06 May 2026 PAPER | The Impact of Health Technology Assessment on Pharmaceutical Prices: Evidence from Germany

📢 NEW PUBLICATION ALERT!

A new article has just been published in The European Journal of Health Economics:

“The Impact of Health Technology Assessment on Pharmaceutical Prices: Evidence from Germany”

✍️ Author: Giovanni Righetti

This study evaluates the causal impact of Germany’s 2011 AMNOG reform, which introduced a formal Health Technology Assessment (HTA)-based system requiring price negotiations for new drugs based on their added therapeutic value.

🔍 Key findings:

• The AMNOG reform led to a 15.8% reduction in negotiated prices for anticancer drugs in Germany.

• The price decrease is causal and robust, accounting for underlying price trends and cross-country comparisons using a triple-difference approach.

• There is no evidence that manufacturers increased launch prices strategically during the initial free-pricing period to offset later negotiated reductions.

• The effect is specific to Germany, with no comparable price changes observed in control countries.

🎯 Bottom line: This study provides strong causal evidence that HTA-driven price negotiations, like Germany’s AMNOG system, can significantly reduce pharmaceutical prices without triggering strategic price inflation at launch, supporting their role as a key policy tool for sustainable drug pricing.

🔗 Read the full article here:

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10198-026-01924-5

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