Pharmaceutical pricing policies and procedures in ASEAN countries: a systematic review

The countries worldwide are implementing various pharmaceutical pricing policies and procedures in order to cope with the increasing drugs prices. Most of the countries implement combination mechanism to determine and regulate the pharmaceutical product prices. The systematic review focused on the five policies and strategies that are most commonly used which are regulation of mark-ups and distribution chains , external I international reference pricing, promotion of generic medicines use and tariffs I taxes exemption. Among the countries that implement regulation on mark-up distribution are Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and Philippines but only on public sector but private sectors are left unregulated. Only Malaysia, Vietnam and Laos are practising external reference pricing to regulate the price of pharmaceutical products while most of the ASEAN countries especially Malaysia and Indonesia applied generic medicine promotion to enhance the use of generic medicines as it cost much lower price. However, the availability of generic substitution in each countries are varies greatly