PMU39 Determinants of Willingness to Copay for Pharmaceuticals in Germany

Abstract

Focussing on German subjects, this study tries to assess people’s willingness to co-pay for pharmaceuticals and potential determinants influencing their decision. While pricing decisions are usually made by political institutions on behalf of the population, the aim of this study is to shed some light on the actual preferences of the latter in order to potentially allow institutions to make better informed decisions. A survey was conducted to elicit information about people’s willingness to co-pay. Twelve different treatments were applied, differing in described disease and stated reference price. A total of 1,199 people participated in the survey. The analyses show the co-payment to be strongly affected by the participant’s perception of the pharmaceutical’s benefit. Moreover, the perception of the pharmaceutical’s benefit is positively affected by the participants’ confidence in the German (healthcare) system and its social security. Also, the stated co-payment is higher if participants (a) are covered by private health insurance, (b) state a higher willingness to consume, (c) have more conservative values, and (d) express social security to be less important. Furthermore, participants who received information on the price of the pharmaceutical (2/3 of the cases) are willing to co-pay a higher amount of money. While the data show the valuation for pharmaceuticals in Germany to positively correlate with their benefit, it also highlights a significant amount of heterogeneity in the queried subjects. From a policy point of view, we take the latter result as emphasising the fact that the value of health care requires a social debate - possibly differentiating between the groups targeted with a certain measure.